Call for Applications:
Two-Year Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Deadline: Monday, 20 January 2025
The SARChI Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ), Stellenbosch University, invites applications for two fulltime Postdoctoral Fellowships commencing March 2025. AVReQ is an interdisciplinary research centre and intellectual home that provides a vibrant environment for senior scholars, postdoctoral fellows, and postgraduate students to conduct research and engage in scholarly debates on issues of social relevance across disciplines. We are offering two senior postdoctoral fellowships intended to contribute critical scholarship and strengthen intellectual capacity of AVReQ’s research teams working on questions of institutional cultures within a global context of these debates.
Research Area and Themes
Research to be undertaken must be relevant to, and/or include the exploration of the theoretical, historical, cultural, and social underpinnings, as well as the transgenerational repercussions of violent histories. The following are examples of areas/themes AVReQ research teams around which to organise a research agenda:
- The construction and transmission of institutional cultures – a focus on the role of archival research.
- Historical trauma, memory – transgenerational transmission and the construction of racial identities.
- Unacknowledged pasts in the present, relation between histories of violence and memory – the role of trauma and its transgenerational effects.
- Transgenerational transmission of trauma in cultural production.
Host: Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma.
Eligibility Criteria
- The applicant for the Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship must have held a previous postdoctoral fellowship and hold a Ph.D. in the Humanities and Social Sciences awarded within the last five years.
- Previous experience in humanities and social science research using qualitative research methods is essential.
- There must be demonstrable previous peer reviewed journal publication/s of the applicant’s work.
- Postdoctoral fellows are not appointed as employees, and as their fellowships are awarded tax-free, they are not eligible for employee benefits. The University reserves the right NOT to make an appointment if suitable candidates do not apply.
Application Procedure
Submit your application documents via email to Mr Westley Ceasar ceasar@sun.ac.za with the following information:
- A motivation letter of no more than two pages on why you would be the ideal candidate to join AVReQ research teams working on one or more of the research topics outlined above.
- A short proposal of no more than two pages aligned with the themes above written in the form of a concept note on how you would approach one of the topics listed above under “Research Area and Themes.” Importantly, the concept note must include your thoughts about the significance of the area of research you are writing about, and whether there is any experience or insights you will draw from in your approach to the research topic.
- CV clearly showing what you focused on during your previous postdoctoral fellowship, and full links to publication/s from your work during this time.
- University transcripts for MA and PhD qualifications.
- Names of two referees one of whom must be host of your previous postdoctoral fellowship. (It is not necessary for the referee to be a former supervisor).