Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations Joint Fellowship with the British Institute at Ankara
Koç University invites applications for PhD, Post-Doctoral, and Senior Fellowships at Koç University's Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED). Opportunities include regular fellowships for support of residential and a few non-residential scholars for the full academic year. Several short-term fellowships for individual or group projects with durations between 2 weeks and 2 months are available for post-doc and senior applicants needing to study in Istanbul for shorter periods of time. A few post-doc or senior applications for regular and short-term fellowships that qualify as collaborative fellowships involving Koç University faculty, centers, or facilities will be preferred. Applicants for regular and short-term fellowships, collaborative or not, are encouraged to consider their applications within one or more of ANAMED’s research themes. Additionally, several joint fellowships with specific application criteria are available as well.
All ANAMED fellows are expected to devote themselves full time to their research projects, to be active members of Koç University’s academic community, and, for full-year fellowships, to give two lectures on their work during the course of the year. Applications from scholars of all nationalities are encouraged, yet fellows must be proficient in English, the language of instruction at Koç University.
Established in 2005, ANAMED’s mission is to promote and produce cutting-edge scholarship contributing to the growing body of critical knowledge on Anatolia and its civilizations. Applications focusing on the archaeology, art history, heritage, and history of Anatolia from the Neolithic through the Ottoman eras are welcome from scholars of these and allied disciplines, including those that focus on the management, conservation, and presentation of the past. Located in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, ANAMED is near many research institutions, archives, and other scholarly facilities and thus serves as a convenient and comfortable locus for intensive study.
Research Themes
ANAMED’s 2017–2018 program introduces four highlighted research themes for regular, short-term, and collaborative fellowships: Environment & Society; the Digital Past; Mobility & Connectivity; and Diversity & Coexistence. The goal of the themes is to foster constructive dialogues and collaborations between scholars working within the scope of ANAMED’s periods and fields of interests. The themes are non-exclusive and overlapping, each meant to attract a variety of approaches (e.g., material, historical, iconographical) from varying fields (e.g., archaeology, art history, heritage, and history). Applying under one or more theme is encouraged but not required. Projects unrelated to these highlighted themes will be given full and impartial consideration in the review process. Theme selection(s) are made within the online application system.
1) Environment and Society
ANAMED solicits applications that investigate the rich and complex trajectory of interactions between human societies and their natural environments, including landscapes. Quantitative studies that uncover data and register change over time as well as qualitative studies that critically re-think interactions between urban and rural spaces, spatial transformations, architecture and the built environment, subsistence economies, infrastructure, and contemporary approaches to cultural heritage fall within the scope of this theme. Projects exploring economic relations, labor, climate, political power and nature, technology and production, and encounters including human and non-human interactions are welcome. Additionally, studies devoted to the sensory past that uncover personally experienced environment through memory, perception, imagination, and the senses (visual, auditory, olfactory) will be positively considered.
2) The Digital Past
“Digital humanities” is a growing field of study. As one of the pioneering institutions of this field in Turkey, ANAMED strongly supports and encourages research not only in digital humanities, but also in the “digital past,” broadly defined. Proposals that leverage digital technologies in the study of any ANAMED subject are encouraged. Spatially significant 2D analyses involving GIS, network analyses, 3D modeling and analyses of objects, features, sites, or landscapes, and analyses of “big data” deriving from the “mining” of textual, visual, or archival sources are examples of possible approaches to elucidating cultural heritage and deciphering socio-economic structures and relations. The development or highlighting of new digitally-enabled methods, such as quantitative and qualitative data visualization, can also be considered. Particularly welcome are innovative and multidisciplinary projects that taking advantage of, if not develop, digital approaches that aim to achieve new understandings of the Anatolian past.
3) Mobility and Connectivity
ANAMED solicits proposals that take the circulation, encounter, and exchange of objects and subjects, human and non-human, material and non-material at their core and investigate them in relation to physical, cultural, economic, and political dynamics within their spatio-temporal contexts. In dialogue with recent scholarship on global history, environmental studies, archaeology and architecture, this theme invites studies on physical nature, agriculture, economy, travel, trade, transportation, and technology as well as political systems, identities, religions, languages, cultural interactions, literary traditions, knowledge, and ideas that situate themselves at zones of contact with an emphasis on movement, connectivity and transfer. Applications on patterns of mobility (including ubran mobility) such as migration, nomadism-transhumance, and settlement, as well as war and displacement are also within the scope of this theme.
4) Diversity and Coexistence
ANAMED welcomes applications that are devoted to questions of ‘identity’ in any epoch of Anatolia’s past. Projects that explore ‘difference,’ including but not limited to ethnic, religious, and gender identities, in relation to each other as well as in conjunction with class, power, the state, and spatio-temporal configurations would be welcomed. Applicants are expected to go beyond compartmentalized, anachronistic or primordialist understandings of identity. Instead, they are encouraged to critically re-think how diversity was defined, and how coexistence was experienced, negotiated and contested in multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multilingual settings, especially with respect to everyday practices. Projects tackling assimilation and acculturation as well as cultural transfers and hybridization would fall within the scope of this theme. Studies that are devoted to shared sites and practices, cultural heritage, and memory would also be received positively.
Applications
All applicants should complete the online application form
Applications must be completed at the latest by December 15.
Please kindly get in contact with the Fellowship Coordinator (Ms. Duygu Tarkan dtarkan@ku.edu.tr) for further inquiry.
Applicants for a PhD Fellowship should upload their graduate school transcript. If their university does not have transcripts, they should upload an official letter from their university indicating their status as registered PhD students there. Letters of recommendation should be sent via the online application website. Letters of recommendation should comment directly on the proposed project and the ability of the applicant to undertake it. For PhD fellowship applicants one of the two letters must be from the applicant's dissertation advisor.
Applicants who will have completed their PhD (including the defense, viva voce, or final public examination) before the fellowship term (September 15) should apply for a Post-Doc Fellowship. If selected and doctoral degree requirements are not met by the start of the term, the fellowship will be converted to PhD fellowship.
Dependents
Applicants with spouse or spouse and children should indicate the number of dependents accompanying them. This information will be used to determine housing. Unfortunately due to building regulations, the ANAMED is in the position to accommodate children under the age 16. Applicants with children under 16 should apply for a Non-Residential Fellowship. A sum of up to $1000 to assist with the travel of accompanying dependents will be paid.
English Proficiency
All applicants who are neither native speakers of English nor graduates of English language universities must ask at least one of their recommenders to comment on their level of proficiency in written and spoken English. However, all candidates who are not native speakers of English, or are not enrolled at an English language university, are encouraged to submit TOEFL/IELTS taken within the last two years with their application.
Definition of Fellows
PhD Fellowships are for advanced PhD students who have completed all coursework and examinations and are working on their dissertations.
Post-Doc Fellowships are for scholars with PhD degrees granted after 15 September 2012. Applicants must possess the PhD degree by the time the fellowship period commences.
Senior Fellowships are for scholars with PhD degrees granted on or before 15 September 2012.
Re-applying to ANAMED Fellowships
Formerly selected fellows can reapply after 5 years.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://anamed.ku.edu.tr/en/fellowships-1