PhD position: Global History/Violence Studies with a regional focus on South America

PhD position: Global History/Violence Studies with a regional focus on South America

The DepartmentofHistoryat the University of Basel, Switzerland, invites applications for a PhD position in a global history project led by Prof. Dr. Marie Muschalek (principal investigator, PI), to be filled as of April 1st, 2025 or by agreement.

The project Killing to Keep - Violent Field Practices and Natural History in the Age of Empire funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation explores the life-worlds of nature experts who killed animals in order to keep and study them in the long nineteenth century. Team members will research the practices, people, and objects of this endeavor in multiple places in the world:

Case study 1: Birds in the tropical dry and moist forests of Northern South America
Case study 2: Fish and mollusks in the shallow and deep waters of the Southwestern Pacific
Case study 3: Large mammals in the mixed wood and grasslands of Southern Africa (done by the PI)

We seek researchers interested in: 1) daily practices in the field, manual skills and techniques of capturing, shooting, skinning, and preserving animals, 2) the men and women, indigenous and intruder alike, involved in the business of collecting animals-turned-specimens, and/or 3) the specimens, trophies, and marketable commodities they produced. Our goal is to account for the complexities of human curiosity and the many different and culturally specific histories of violence against nonhuman and human life within the broader framework of colonial subjugation and its politics of difference.

Your position

As a PhD candidate you will research the collection of birds in the tropical forests of Northern South America in the second half of the nineteenth century. You will investigate the hunt for those colorful feathers and difficult-to-reach, fleeting specimens in the context of post-independence states and their remote indigenous forest communities. Your research can build on preliminary work done by the PI and her collaboration partners in Ecuador on the history of German-speaking Jesuits, Creole and indigenous Ecuadorians who captured specimens together in the forests surrounding Quito, sometimes as far as the Galápagos Islands.

You will be expected to

• conduct independent archival research and complete the dissertation within the funding period;
• actively participate in advancing the project’s overall research goals, collaborate closely with your teammates;
• help with administrative tasks, conference organization, communication tasks, webpage content management.

You will be encouraged to

• conduct fieldwork, seek contact and respectfully collaborate with local experts in the geographical area of your work package;
• publish one peer-reviewed article or book chapter;
• present your findings at international conferences.

Your profile

• You must hold a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in History or a related discipline.
• You must be fluent in English, our team’s working language. Additional language proficiencies relevant to your work package, notably Spanish, are very welcome.
• You must take residence in Basel during your entire contract period and be able to travel for the project’s field research.
• You should have some experiences in archival research and a familiarity with the historiography of South America’s (post-)colonial past.
• You should be keen to learn, open to creative, experimental work, and eager to actively participate in the team effort.

We offer you

• A fully funded PhD position (4 years) at the History Department at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
• A motivated, interdisciplinary team that will support your ideas, research, and career in a stimulating, welcoming and multicultural environment.
• You pursue your dissertation project within a collaborative framework, affiliated as a member of the Basel Graduate School of History .
• Salary and social benefits are provided according to Swiss standards and University of Basel rules .

Application / Contact

Please submit your complete application documents including a letter of motivation, CV, publication list (if existent), relevant diplomas, sample of writing (max. 10 pages), contact details of two references.

• Application deadline is September 15th, 2024.
• All applications must be submitted through the University of Basel Employment Portal.
• Interviews will be held in person or via Zoom on October 8th and 9th, 2024. The expected starting date is April 1st, 2025.

If you have any questions, please contact Prof. Dr. Marie Muschalek . You can also find out more about us at https://dg.philhist.unibas.ch/de/') .

www.unibas.ch')

In your application, please refer to myScience.ch and referenceJobID65070.