The Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM), one of the six research schools at the Faculty of Humanities, currently has a vacant PhD position as part of the NWO VIDI Project ‘Mapping Transnational Conflict Heritage, Radio Collections in Europe, 1930-1960’, led by Dr. Carolyn Birdsall. 

In Mapping Transnational Conflict Heritage, the central aim is to trace the ways in which radio sound collections were archived, circulated and used during and after World War II. This VIDI project takes the impact of conflict on media as its central theme, and proposes to develop a framework for studying how media collections became a form of transnational conflict heritage, namely by examining processes of transformation, relocation and valorisation.

You will investigate case studies in Central-Eastern Europe, and will work closely with two subprojects: the first examines comparable cases in Western Europe (conducted by the PrincipaI Investigator), and the second explores how (meta)data about radio collections across Europe can be best integrated and analysed with the aid of digital methods (conducted by the Postdoctoral researcher).

In your subproject you will:

• analyse the complex dynamics around recorded radio collections in Central-Eastern Europe (1930-1960), including (East) German, Czechoslovak and Polish contexts;
• perform in-depth research of historical source materials and explore how/why institutions (and social actors) archived and used radio collections under conditions of war, occupation and reconstruction;
• collect data about when/where broadcast radio recordings were created and located, and will contribute to the project team’s analysis of these patterns.

Your tasks include:

• completion and defense of a PhD thesis within 4 years;
• completion and submission of two journal article manuscripts;
• participation in meetings of the project research group and contribution to a shared database;
• participation in knowledge dissemination activities;
• presentation of intermediate research results at workshops and conferences.

We expect you to have:

• a (R)MA or MPhil degree in a relevant discipline (e.g. History, Media Studies, European Studies, Cultural Studies, Heritage and Memory Studies);
• excellent research skills;
• excellent written and spoken English; at least reading level of German and Czech (or one other Central-Eastern European language);
• strong cooperative attitude and willingness to engage in collaborative research;
• a willingness to travel for on-site research in archives, conferences;
• strong organizational skills.

The appointment will be for 38 hours per week for a maximum period of four years at the Department of Media Studies of the Faculty of Humanities. The research will be carried out under the aegis of AHM. The appointment is initially for a period of 16 months; contingent on satisfactory performance it will be extended by a maximum of 32 months. The intended starting date of the contract is 1 August 2019. The gross monthly salary (on a full-time basis) will range from €2,266 during the first year to €2,897 during the fourth year, in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities, supplemented with an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus. 

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.

http://www.uva.nl/en/home

Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM)

The Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) fosters a dynamic, interdisciplinary and transnational research of heritage and memory, organizes PhD training, seminars, reading groups, workshops, public debates, and international conferences, and stimulates scholarly cooperation in an international setting.

http://ahm.uva.nl/