Early Stage Research Program at at CEU
Duration: 36 months (Full Time)
Annual Salary: within the range of EU Marie Currie European Training Network programs
Monthly Mobility Supplement: according to the rules of EU Marie Currie European Training Network programs
Monthly Family Allowance (if eligible): according to the rules of EU Marie Currie European Training Network programs
Details Specific to the Post
The Central European University (Hungary) invites applications for a 36 months fixed term post (1 March 2016 until 31 January 2019) as an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) in gender studies to research and write a PhD thesis within the area of ‘European boundaries and the production of cultures of equality’.
Successful applicant will be based with the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University.
This is a part of a job call for fifteen researchers to work on the EU-funded European Training Network ‘GRACE: Gender and Cultures of Equality’.
We welcome applications from candidates with Master’s degrees, a demonstrable interest and experience in gender studies, English language skills, and a willingness to spend a period of 6-9 months on secondment at Utrecht University (Netherlands). Applicants will be required to submit a 1000 word research proposal outlining the innovative ways in which they will tackle this project (further details below).
Background and Context: What is GRACE
The aim of the GRACE (Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe) project is to systematically investigate the cultural production of gender equalities within Europe. Previous scholarly work focuses on European gender equality policies, GRACE extends this work by drawing on innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies to investigate an under-examined aspect of those processes, namely the production of cultures of equality that underpin, enable and constrain those changing policy and legislative frameworks. Our methodological approach understands culture as neither normative frameworks nor ways of representing the world, but more fundamentally as the process through which people create the worlds they inhabit. We will ask three main questions:
• How have cultures of equality been produced, embodied, objectified and visualised in art, media, material and popular culture, as well as ‘official’ discourse in Europe?
• How might cultures of equality in Europe be produced and performed differently?
• In what ways do changing and contested cultural productions shape and constrain people’s awareness about, perceptions of, responses to and deployments of equality discourses within specific social contexts?
The GRACE project will recruit, employ and provide advanced training for 15 Early Stage Researchers who will research the production of cultures of gender equality across five specific sites where cultures of gender equalities are produced and contested by differently situated social agents. These five sites form the core of our five research and training Work Packages, and are focused as follows:
1. mediated cultures of gender equality;
2. urban cultures of gender equality;
3. intellectual and activist cultures of gender equality;
4. textual and artistic cultures of gender equality;
5. employing cultures of gender equality.
GRACE is designed to: equip this new generation of ESRs to play a leading role in developing advanced techniques for investigating the production of cultures of gender equality; translate creative and critical capacities into innovative cultural practices within and beyond academia; and enable them to take up positions as experts in producing new gender equalities cultures.
Specific Duties and Responsibilities of the post
The successful candidate for this post will:
• Research ‘European boundaries and the production of cultures of equality’ as part of WP 3 (Intellectual and Activist Cultures of Gender Equality). S/he will be employed by and enrolled on a PhD at CEU for 36 months from 1st March 2016, and will submit with the application a 1000 word research proposal outlining the innovative ways in which they will design a research project to investigate the following:
How do activists and intellectuals perceive, engage with and attempt to influence the EU’s near-neighbours in terms of advancing philosophies and practices of gender equality, considering both the pre-accession experience of new Eastern European members and the ongoing experience of those who border the EU. In addition to questions about gender and labour markets, family and the welfare state, the project will consider how the rights of sexual minorities are, and are not, linked performatively to presumed processes of integration and Europeanization.
Applicants should include in their academically rigorous and referenced proposals an indication of which areas of society, culture, politics, economics and/or the law they propose to research, which national contexts they propose to examine, and the innovative ways in which they propose to approach this methodologically.
For this project we are looking for a researcher with training and experience in doing innovative and reflexive empirical research, either qualitative or quantitative, and linking it to ongoing theoretical debates in the social sciences. The broad research topic should be social inequalities, and any aspect thereof would be considered as long as the concept of "gender" is relevant for describing and explicating it further. Comparative projects are especially welcome but doing comparative work is not a criterion for acceptance.
The applicant should submit a research proposal in which she/he describes the research problem, its theoretical relevance beyond its immediate geographical and empirical reach and explicate and justify the methodology chosen.
As a part of their research training, all applicants will also have the following duties:
• Spend a compulsory secondment period of 6-9 months at Utrecht University (Netherlands) during the second year of their tenure. During this period they will receive further research training and will conduct comparative research.
• Attend the following project-wide training events:
o Spring 2016 - 1st GRACE Spring School: Methods training workshops and seminars in Hull (UK)
o January 2017 - 1st GRACE Winter School - Employability Training Workshop in Bologna (Italy)
o Spring 2017 - 2nd GRACE Spring School: Theorising and analysing cultures of equality workshops and seminars in Granada (Spain)
o January 2018 - 2nd GRACE Winter School: Communicating cultures of equality – dissemination and exploitation training and workshop in Budapest (Hungary)
• Collectively curate with the 14 other Early Stage Researchers the Museum of Cultures of Equality to be held at the GRACE final conference in Hull in the summer of 2019.
• Contribute to the GRACE interactive digital hub through regular blog posts and the collective development of a GRACE Gender Equality App.
• Contribute to the final project report in the summer of 2019.
• Successfully complete and submit a PhD thesis before the project ends in August 2019.
How to apply
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://hro.ceu.edu/vacancies/early-stage-researcher-%E2%80%93-grace-gender-and-cultures-of-equality-esr8