The Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH) currently has a vacant postdoctoral position as part of the NWO-funded VIDI Project The Freedom of the Streets. Gender and Urban Space in Eurasia (1600-1850), led by Dr Danielle van den Heuvel.
This postdoctoral project is one of five closely-related projects, which together aim to systematically analyse the gendering of urban space in premodern Asia and Europe. Each team member focuses on a specific city or a specific theme. A PhD candidate and a postdoctoral researcher study gendered uses of space in two of the most important cities in the early modern world: Amsterdam and Edo. Another PhD project specifically looks at the relationship between urban nature and gender and compares women’s experiences in Berlin and Amsterdam. The post for which applications are sought will be filled by a postdoctoral researcher who takes a leading role in digitally visualising the relationship between gender and urban space in these cities, thereby providing a complementary spatial analysis, as well as an important tool to engage with wider audiences. Building on the work of the PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the Principal Investigator analyses how the access of women to pre-industrial streets was shaped in contrasting Eurasian urban communities.
Tasks of the postdoctoral researcher will include:
If you are the postdoctoral researcher we are looking for, you must have:
Desirable qualities are:
You will be appointed for 26,6 hours per week (0,7 FTE) for a period of 24 months at the Department of History, European Studies & Religious Studies of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. The intended starting date of the contract is 1 March 2019. The gross monthly salary (on a full-time basis) will range from €3,303 during the first year to €4,033 during the second year, in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.
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.
ASH is one of six research schools in the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Applications are invited from excellent candidates who wish to conduct research on digital historical visualizations including GIS-mapping and the making of 3D models of early modern streets as interfaces for historical research on premodern gendered urban space.
This postdoctoral project is one of five closely-related projects, which together aim to systematically analyse the gendering of urban space in premodern Asia and Europe. It is widely held that between 1600 and 1850, women gradually withdrew from the public sphere of the street and moved to the private sphere of the home. This powerful narrative, linked to theories of modernisation, has created a conceptual stranglehold that sees public space as exclusively male and private space as entirely female, thereby obscuring the actual workings of gender in pre-industrial urban societies. The Freedom of the Streets project offers a pioneering approach to the study of gendered urban space, in which mapping and visualisations play an important role alongside analyses of gendered discourses about urban mobility.
For further information you may contact:
Your application should include the following information, in one PDF file (not zipped):
You must have completed your PhD before the start of this postdoctoral project.
Only complete applications submitted as one PDF file to this link will be considered.
Interviews will take place in early January 2019. For candidates living abroad interviews may be held via Skype.