Thursday 3 September 2015

VACANCY: PhD candidate in Anthropology for subproject ‘Sexual well-being and relationships among African migrants’

PhD candidate in Anthropology University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam — AcademicTransfer







Job description

The
AISSR and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam
are looking for a PhD candidate who will participate in the NWO-funded
research project ‘Sexuality, Religion and Secularism. Cultural
encounters in the African Diaspora and the Netherlands’.

The PhD
candidate will conduct the subproject entitled ‘Sexual well-being and
relationships among African migrants’. This sub-project is embedded
within the larger research program titled ‘Sexuality, Religion and
Secularism. Cultural encounters in the African Diaspora and the
Netherlands’, carried out in cooperation with the University of
Groningen. The aim of this program is to research how sexual well-being
is approached from three perspectives:

  1. that of (Dutch) organizations working with a sexual health approach,
  2. that of religious actors in the African Diaspora and
  3. the perspective of African migrants themselves.
Each
of these perspectives will be researched with attention to the
particular cultural trajectories they are part of, emerging from
sub-Sahara Africa and Europe. Theoretically, the research program
conceptualizes these approaches in terms of practices and techniques of
the self. Furthermore, the research program departs from the premise
that secularity is not a neutral phenomenon, but implies particular
techniques of the self and particular ways of framing religion and
tradition.

The focus of the project for which we are currently
hiring will be on the third perspective, with the aim of researching and
analyzing the personal biographies and cultural trajectories of African
migrants in the Netherlands. The focus is on the choices they make
regarding their sexual well-being and relationships, and the ways they
understand and experience the different (religious) organisations and
agents they encounter in this search.

The PhD candidate will be
based in Amsterdam at the AISSR and will conduct up to 12 months of
fieldwork in the Randstad, the conurbation in the west of the
Netherlands that encompasses Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht
and many smaller towns in between.

Tasks

  • Participate in the AISSR PhD programme;
  • conduct ethnographic field research;
  • write and complete a PhD dissertation within four years;
  • 10% teaching;
  • participating in conferences, workshops, seminars and other scholarly activities.

Requirements

The PhD candidate should have the following credentials:

  • have
    graduated with excellent results on a research-based MA thesis in
    Anthropology or a closely related discipline such as Cultural Sociology
    or Human Geography;
  • have relevant (ethnographic) fieldwork experience on ideally on gender and sexuality;
  • have excellent written and spoken English, and ideally fluent in French or Portuguese as well;
  • to be able and willing to work in an interdisciplinary team;
  • have the abilities to finish the PhD thesis in four years; i.e., good skills in planning, taking initiatives, academic writing.
The
faculty is committed to promote diversity and gender equality and we
strongly encourage qualified person from minority groups to apply.

Conditions of employment

The
full-time appointments will be for a period of four years (12 months
plus a further 36 months contingent on a satisfactory performance during
the first year), starting January 2016.

The gross monthly salary
will range from €2,125 in the first year to €2,717 in the final year,
based on a full-time position of 38 hours per week, plus 8% holiday
allowance and 8,3% end-of- year allowance, in conformity with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.

Organisation

University of Amsterdam

With
over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600
million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub
within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted
within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences,
Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed
on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where
disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links
with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and
abroad.

The
UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels
who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and
standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent,
creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open
atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and
society.

Department

Department of Anthropology

The Department
of Anthropology is one of the Departments in the Faculty of Social and
Behavioural Sciences (FMG). Research and education are carried out by
special institutes. The College of Social Sciences (CSS) and the
Graduate School for the Social Sciences (GSSS) are responsible for the
undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in the social sciences.
Research takes place under the aegis of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR),
a multidisciplinary research institute, the biggest one of its kind in
the Netherlands and possibly in Europe. The broad scope and pluralism of
our education and research programmes are inspired by and reflect a
strong degree of internationalisation.

The AISSR and the
Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam are looking
for a PhD candidate who will participate in the NWO-funded research
project ‘Sexuality, Religion and Secularism. Cultural encounters in the
African Diaspora and the Netherlands’.

Additional information

For information you may contact:



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