项目介绍

2024年11月2日

Function

Do you want to contribute to a critical understanding of how tourism intersects with slavery and colonial heritage in the context of increasing cultural memory politics? Do you have a background in cultural geography, tourism studies, cultural anthropology, heritage studies, cultural studies, memory studies, cultural sociology, museum studies and/or other related disciplines? Do you speak any of English, Dutch, German, Portuguese? Would you like to be part of a dynamic and vibrant interdisciplinary team carrying out research on important social issues? One of these positions may be right for you.

We are seeking a highly motivated, innovative and creative PhD candidates to join our team for 4 years as part of the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project ‘FRICTIONS’.

RICTIONS is a five-year project that seeks to unravel the extent to which tourism transforms the past of slavery and colonial heritage and how the frictions generated in this process are scaled up to provoke shifts in societal narratives. FRICTIONS takes the doing and being of tourism places as its basis and point of departure within the spatial turn across the social sciences and humanities.

FRICTIONS is designed as a cross-continental multi-level comparative inquiry with an overriding ambition of developing a novel interdisciplinary theory of tourism-led activation of cultural memory in relation to slavery and colonial heritage.

We seek three PhD candidates who have the necessary academic training, research experience and language skills to respectively conduct one of the subprojects of: 1) Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands; (2) Angola-Brazil-Portugal and; (3) Namibia-Brazil-Germany. You will be part of team comprising three PhD candidates, a Postdoc (to be recruited later) and the principal investigator (PI). The three PhD candidates will focus specifically on tourism-related practices and performances in their triangular case locations (Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands; Angola-Brazil-Portugal and; Namibia-Brazil-Germany). Based on an ethos of collaborative teamwork, fieldwork will be synchronised and the team members will collaborate on addressing larger theoretical questions, developing shared methodological toolkits, and organising academic events related to the project. The entire team is expected to reside in the Netherlands and work from the Cultural Geography Group (GEO) of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) for the duration of project, except for the fieldwork periods.

The tasks and responsibilities of each PhD candidate include:

• conduct fieldwork in one of the three triangular cases (Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands; Angola-Brazil-Portugal and; Namibia-Brazil-Germany) for a total of up to 9 months.
• write and submit a PhD thesis assessed against the WUR rubrics for PhD thesis.
• actively participate in the meetings and proceedings of the project (such as reading groups, feedback sessions, workshops, conferences, etc.) and the wider activities of the Cultural Geography Chair Group as well as those of the Centre for Space, Place and Society (CSPS) such as Tourism@WUR.
• present and share your research results in (international) conferences.
• help with setting up a project database in collaboration with your team members.
• help to (co)-organize academic events related to the project, such as workshops, seminars, international conferences and other public events.
• assist with teaching on appropriate courses through guest lectures based on your research project/expertise.

Function Requirements

This project draws on different disciplines from the social sciences and humanities, including cultural geography, tourism studies, anthropology, cultural studies, heritage studies, memory studies, cultural sociology, media studies, museum studies and other related disciplines. PhD candidates are not expected to be experts in all disciplines upfront but should possess broad curiosity, ability to navigate multiple fields, and enthusiasm for cross-disciplinary learning and development. We are looking for motivated, collaborative, and flexible team members who are also able to work independently and contribute to the broader team project.

Contactinformation

For more information about this position, please contact Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong, Assistant Professor, telephone +31-317-482428  or by e-mail: emmanuel.adu-ampong@wur.nl  .

For more information about the procedure, please contact Noorien Abbas, corporate recruiter, noorien.abbas@wur.nl .