Call: 2 full-time Post-doc positions (2020–2024)
The Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences „Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“ is a research unit at Leipzig University, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). We are looking for two scholars for full-time post-doctoral positions (TV-L E 13), from May 2020 to March 2024.
Since 2016, we have been investigating forms of conceptual distinction and arrangements of social differentiation between religious and other social spheres, practices, interpretive frameworks, institutions and discourses. To such arrangements, which are often contentious, we refer with the heuristic term ‘secularities’. Based on the hypothesis that drawing boundaries between the religious and the non-religious is neither an exclusive sign of modernity nor the ‘West’, we have already explored corresponding emic taxonomies, forms of institutional differentiation and modes of demarcation in different eras and areas especially in the Islamicate World and several regions in Central, East, South and Southeast Asia. In the second funding phase, starting in 2020, we will regionally focus on the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Israel. Systematically, we especially want to shed light on the following aspects:
- path dependencies and probabilities, global entanglements, cultural encounters and processes of cultural transfer and translation
- processes of both religionisation and secularisation as well as of culturalisation and heritagisation
- the heterogeneity of ‘Western’ secularities
- the development and use of symbolic binaries and the relation between epistemic and social structures
- materiality of the religious and the secular and markers of secularity
Therefore, we are looking for scholars who are interested in addressing theoretical questions and able to relate them to historical developments. Both PostDocs will each work both on a research project of their own choice that relates directly to the centre’s overarching research programme and the Multiple Secularities approach, as well as contribute to the further development of this approach itself. Thus, all applicants should fulfil the following requirements:
- research experience on questions of secularity, secularisation and secularism;
- empirical research experience (historical or contemporary) in one of the following regions: the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, or Israel
Additionally, applicants for the first position (Post-doc I) should have research experience in Historical Sociology and in qualitative methodology.
Applicants for the second position (Post-doc II) should have empirical research experience in the (historical) study of religion and in questions of the materiality of the religious and the secular (e.g. arts, architecture, …).
The researchers will have to be present in Leipzig and be willing to work with a group of scholars from Leipzig as well as with international fellows on the topic of the centre. English is the primary language of communication at the centre. However, applicants ideally should have basic knowledge of German or at least be willing to acquire basic knowledge quickly.
Persons, who are interested, please send their CV, research proposal (2000 words max.) publication list, work sample (one published article or chapter) and a letter of intent by 30 January 2020 as one pdf-file to:
Johannes Duschka
Administrative Coordinator
multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de
Please use the subject line “Post-doc I” or “Post-doc II" for your e-mail.
