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PlastiCITIES: Changing Waste Work in Urban Kenya

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Deadline for applications: 05 July 2026, at noon (East African Time)

³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ (KU) invites qualified and motivated candidates to apply for a fully funded PhD position under the PlastiCITIES research program. Applicants should hold a graduate degree in the social sciences, broadly defined to include disciplines such as anthropology, African Studies, development studies, environmental studies, urban studies, political science, sociology and law.Ìý Your project will focus on plastics and the circular economy in Mombasa.

The PlastiCITIES research programme

Plastic waste contributes to climate change through emission of greenhouse gases and ocean pollution. The circular economy (CE) has gained traction over the past decade to address this problem. By designing out waste and recycling products back into the economy, CE promises to transform linear ‘make-take-waste’ economies into sustainable closed loop systems. For post-consumer plastics, CE means the transformation of (recyclable) plastics from end of life ‘waste’ to ‘resource’. The scholarly literature on CE has largely approached the CE for plastics from technical, engineering, and business perspectives. Research is needed that examines the social implications of the drive towards a CE for plastics from the perspectives and experiences of those who do the ‘dirty work’ of collecting, sorting and processing plastic waste. PlastiCITIES examines how differently situated waste workers are responding to the drive toward a CE for plastics in urban Kenya.

Plastic pollution is a major problem in Kenya, where an estimated 37 kilotons of plastic waste leaks into the environment and ocean each year. Waste management is viewed as an urgent issue, especially in cities where waste accumulates in open dumpsites and blocks waterways. In response, the Kenyan government is adopting CE policies targeting the waste sector, including recently gazetted Extended Producer Responsibility legislation under the Sustainable Waste Management Act, which promotes the formalisation of the waste sector in which low-income informal waste workers have long gleaned a living. At the same time, evolving recycling technologies and growing demand for recycled plastics are driving new markets for plastic waste-turned-resource. We hypothesise that these interventions and economies are creating new commodity frontiers, understood as the incorporation of resources formerly deemed as lacking in economic value into the capitalist economy.

Waste workers are a differentiated set of low-income actors, often women, young men and migrants. They work in different activities in the plastics economy – washing, sorting, collecting, brokering – often in dangerous conditions. While existing studies of waste work tend to focus exclusively on waste pickers on dumpsites, PlastiCITIES innovates by mapping out and documenting emerging forms of waste work as new markets are developing in post-consumer plastics. A growing body of evidence from grey literature and newspaper reports suggests that, in the case of Kenya, new forms of formal and informal waste work are emerging in and around CE initiatives. Included in this are young men collecting plastics in lower middle-class neighbourhoods; beachcombers picking plastic waste washing up along Kenya’s coasts; and young women and men trying to work the price differentials in plastics along the Uganda-Kenya border. There are also new more formalized opportunities for waste work taken up in plastic recycling factories and with licensed waste collection companies, often supported by NGOs and government initiatives. Knowledge of these new and emerging forms of waste work is tentative and fragmentary, as are the possible relationships they have to each other, and to waste pickers who continue to collect, sort and process plastics in municipal dumpsites. PlastiCITIES is designed to provide new knowledge and analysis of these existing, new and emerging forms of waste work.

 

Primary data collection will be organised around three sites in urban Kenya that have been selected for different configurations of governance structures, CE interventions and waste worker population characteristics. These are: 1. Mombasa,  which hosts a number of plastic waste initiatives due to the problem of ocean plastics, many of which aim to include informal workers in the emerging plastic waste economy; 2. Nairobi, where densely populated areas struggle with large volumes of plastic waste and an aggressive private sector seeks to profit from waste management;  and 3. Busia,  a border-town struggling with large amounts of plastic waste that enters Kenya as contraband from Uganda and where competing bodies of national and county legislation shape the economy in post-consumer plastics.

The advertised PhD project will focus on Mombasa, and will include long term qualitative fieldwork.

PlastiCITIES is an international collaboration between the University of Copenhagen (Hannah Elliott, Ben Jones), ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ (Akinyi Eurallyah, Eric Kioko), and Busara (Juhi Jain, Mario Schmidt).

The main supervisor will be Dr. Eric Kioko, the project lead at ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ, with co-supervision by Prof. Ben Jones at University of Copenhagen.Ìý The PhD student will have the opportunity for a research stay at University of Copenhagen’s Centre of African Studies to gain insight into academic research and for networking opportunities. PhD students will also have the opportunity to use office space at Busara.

General conditions for the PhD positions

1. The positions are fully funded and include a competitive stipend and educational fees.
2. The successful PhD candidates will be enrolled at ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ, in the Department of Environmental Studies and Community Development.
3. The scholarships will run for three years, starting in September 2026, and include a research stay in Denmark.
4. The candidates are expected to carry out at least 6 months of fieldwork in the specified project focus area. They are also expected to participate fully in PlastiCITIES activities and meet the requirements of the KU PhD school.

Eligibility criteria

Applicants should:

1. Hold a bachelor’s degree (minimum, Second Class Honours) and a master’s degree (Excellent or Credit) in a relevant social sciences discipline (anthropology, African Studies, environmental studies, development studies or another relevant field).
2. Be highly motivated to pursue full time doctoral studies and develop an academic career.
3. Be willing to conduct fieldwork in the preselected study area, and preferably have previous fieldwork experience or at least experience with qualitative methods.
4. Have research experience in East Africa
5. Ideally have prior engagement with studying waste, circular economy, environmental governance, and related issues.
6. Be willing to travel and actively participate in the project activities.
7. Demonstrate strong writing and communication skills.
8. Be a constructive and engaged team member.
9. Be eligible for residency in Kenya, if not already granted.
10. Demonstrate skills in academic writing

Application process

Applicants are invited to submit a short PhD concept note of approximately four pages (maximum 1,600 words, excluding references) outlining the focus of their proposed research project. The concept note must include the following elements:

1. Statement of the research problem and specific research questions.
2. Theoretical framework.
3. Proposed study area.
4. Methodological approach, including fieldwork considerations.
5. Practical considerations, including field access and security.
6. Ethical considerations.
7. Time plan.

PLEASE NOTE: Concept notes generated through AI or featuring AI in their content will not be considered. The panel will use AI detection tools to identify generative AI.

The concept note must be accompanied by the following documents:

1. A detailed CV outlining the applicant’s educational and professional background (2 pages max).
2. Certified copies of academic certificates and transcripts.
3. An electronic copy of the applicant’s MA thesis
4. Relevant publications
5. Contact details for two academic referees.

All application documents must be organised into a single PDF file.

When and where?

The deadline for submitting applications is July 05th, 2026 at 12:00 PM (East African Time).

Applications should be sent by email with the subject title ‘PlastiCITIES PhD application – MOMBASA’ to Dr. Eric Kioko, kioko.eric@ku.ac.ke and Dr. Hannah Elliott (hel.msc@cbs.dk). For more information about the PhD call, please contact Dr. Eric Kioko and/or Dr. Hannah Elliott.

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The assessment committee will consist of a panel of PlastiCITIES researchers. All applications will be considered by the end of July 2026 and ONLY successful candidates will be notified by 15.08.2026.Ìý If you do not hear from us, please consider your application as unsuccessful. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to attend a two-stage interview process in August 2026. Stage 1 will be an online interview, while Stage 2 will be an in-person written interview.