The research priority area Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI) is looking for a junior researcher in the area of Architectural or Urban History (17th-century) as part of the NWO project Virtual Interiors as Interfaces for Big Historical Data Research: Spatially Enhanced Publications of the Creative Industries of the Dutch Golden Age, jointly conducted by Huygens ING and the University of Amsterdam by principal applicant prof. Charles van den Heuvel and co-applicants prof. Julia Noordegraaf and prof. Gabri van Tussenbroek and in partnership with Brill and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. We now invite applications from excellent candidates who wish to conduct research of archival primary sources of 17th-century Amsterdam to support the identification of historical geo-locations of creative industries and the reconstruction of the interiors of two houses of the Dutch Golden Age.

You will contribute to the Virtual Interiors project by identifying and analyzing archival data of Amsterdam that support the identification of centers of creativity in the Dutch Golden Age (by the Doctoral Researcher of the project) and by identifying historical building plans and architectural drawings to support the reconstruction of the interiors of two houses (by the Strategic Postdoctoral Researcher of the project). Data include 17th-century century notary acts, historical maps of Amsterdam, buildings plans and elevations of its houses.  Tasks will include:

• selection of primary sources of Amsterdam together with the PhD student and postdoctoral researcher;
• archival research of pre-cadastral maps, transport acts, tax cohiers, assignments of land;
• archival research of historical building plans and architectural drawings;
• completion of one co-authored article;
• close collaboration with the other researchers of the group (including on issues not directly connected to one’s own project, such as supporting the management and coordination of the project and its dissemination activities).

Related vacancies of the Virtual Interiors project are 'Postdoctoral Researcher Architectural History / Digital Archaeology' and 'Postdoctoral Researcher Information Science/Computer Science'.

If you are the junior researcher we are looking for, you have:

• a (research) master’s degree in a relevant field (such as Architectural History, Building History or Urban History), obtained by 1 September 2018;
• proven skills in paleography and the reading of Dutch 17th-century archival textual and visual sources;
• proven skills and interest in digital methods and techniques with regard to humanities research;
• research experience, or a track record of project based work, and the ability to function in a multidisciplinary team;
• proficiency in Dutch and English.

You will be appointed for 38 hours per week (1.0 FTE) for a maximum period of two years at the Department of Media Studies of the Faculty of Humanities. The research will be carried out under the aegis of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, one of the six research schools within the Faculty of Humanities and partner of the Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity. The appointment is initially for a period of 12 months; contingent on satisfactory performance it will be extended by a maximum of 12 months. The intended starting date of the contract is 1 September 2018. The gross monthly salary (on a full-time basis) will range from € 2,709 to € 2,917 depending on your experience and qualifications. TheCollective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable.

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 Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity

Our mission is to explore the effects of cultural heritage in a broad sense (from material culture to art, literature, and the new media) on processes of identity formation and the effects of identities on the meanings attributed to cultural heritage.

Individuals and groups collect, preserve, and distribute the material and immaterial remains of the past in order to position themselves in time and space, to determine where they come from, to whom they belong, and where they are heading.

Heritage is our ‘cultural DNA’: material objects such as everyday objects, monuments, and architecture and immaterial forms of heritage such as values, ideas, and ritual practices are the essential building blocks of local, national, or transnational identities. Just as much as today’s genetics may work to the benefit of physical health, understanding the interactions between cultural heritage and identities contributes substantially to the quality of individual life and society.

The project Virtual Interiors as Interfaces for Big Historical Data Research: Spatially Enhanced Publications of the Creative Industries of the Dutch Golden Age is conducted within ACHI’s research program Creative Amsterdam: An E-Humanities Perspective led by Julia Noordegraaf. CREATE researchers use large-scale digital data and techniques to investigate how cultural industries have shaped Amsterdam’s unique position as a Creative City in a European and global context, from the 17th century until the present day. One of the core themes is the Amsterdam Time Machine, an information system with geographical data at its core, to which the Virtual Interiors project will contribute a ‘proof of concept’.

You will be supervised by Charles van den Heuvel and Gabri van Tussenbroek.

http://achi.uva.nl/