The Faculty of Humanities has a vacancy for Professor of Cross-media Culture.

Contemporary social and cultural practices – from personal friendships to political election campaigns, from education to commercial forms of entertainment – are shaped by a matrix of different media and by the continuous transformation of media forms and media technologies. While TV – with its reality shows, spectacular live events, and transmissions of global catastrophes as well as its continuing offer of imported and home-made fiction series and characteristic forms of storytelling, – is still of major importance, its impact changes as it is augmented and partly replaced by social media, mobile phones, and ‘second screens’. Therefore it is paramount to understand the specific aesthetic, social, political and economic dynamics of different media and the way in which content and user practices travel across these media, provoking new connections and modifications.

The professorship for Cross Media Culture is expected to stimulate and develop approaches from different disciplines, ranging from cultural studies to critical theory and from political economy to production studies. The professor is furthermore expected to actively participate in academic and public debates on the on-going transformation of media culture. The knowledge of the history and continuing relevance of film, radio and television will be the starting point to map the conceptual, social, and cultural changes that come with digital, mobile and social media.

The Chair in Cross-media culture is expected to cover, both in teaching and research, several of the following topics:

• the transformation of critical media theory in the context of institutional and technological changes in media landscapes (e.g. discussions around creativity, materialism, ecology, convergence);
• the changing role of media institutions, new forms of mediated politics, and the growing importance of social media, continual technological shifts in content production, circulation and transformation;
• the changing relationship between modes of media production, media aesthetics, and user practices.

The professor is expected to contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration with the film and new media sections of the Media Studies department, to expanding teaching and research links with public partners (such as EYE, Beeld en Geluid, Stedelijk Museum, City of Amsterdam), to expanding opportunities for students in practice-based learning and to developing new research and teaching initiatives.

Candidates for the position are expected to meet the following requirements:

• a PhD in media studies or a related field;

• an excellent international reputation in the field of media studies;
• an excellent academic publication record;
• an experienced and enthusiastic teacher on all levels of academic training;
• experience in developing new teaching programs;
• experience with collaborative projects;
• a proven track record of acquiring external research funding;
• experience in the supervision of PhD-tracks;
• an extensive national and international network with other academic and cultural institutions;
• the ability to contribute to knowledge exchange in public as well as academic settings;
• the ability to establish productive connections with other academic disciplines within as well as outside the department;
• proven excellent management and leadership qualities.

All foreign employees appointed at the Faculty of Humanities are expected to have a good command of both written and spoken Dutch within two years.

Please also check the document Information about chairs at the Faculty of Humanities.

The appointment will be permanent. The gross salary will normally conform to professorial scale 2, between €5,334 and €7,766 gross per month (€74,441 to €108,382 per annum, including 8% holiday pay and an 8,3% end of year payment) on a full-time basis in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement (CAO) for Dutch Universities. In certain cases, however, different terms of employment may be offered.

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.

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Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen

The Faculty of Humanities provides education and conducts research with a strongly international profile in a large number of disciplines in the field of language, history, and culture. Located in the heart of Amsterdam, the Faculty maintains close ties with many cultural institutions in the capital city. Almost 1,000 employees are affiliated with the Faculty, which has about 8,000 students. The Faculty of Humanities consists of eight departments.

Media and Culture encompasses film studies, cross-media culture as well as global media studies.

Together these scholarly fields and programs offer a comprehensive and critical analysis with both theoretical and practice-based modes of inquiry concerned with audio-visual culture as well as online and digital culture both in the Netherlands and internationally.

For the study of media and culture there are two main entry points. The first is the study of the culture of media, including practices of production, programming formats and media aesthetics. The culture of production is studied alongside that of consumption, especially engagement and agency of the spectator, viewer, user and navigator. Media production and consumption are continually changing and challenged with the advent of new media, where there are new mobile screens, media formats, users and cultures of commodification and control. The second entry point is the study of media in culture, from the contents of cinema, domestic and urban screens, to the software and apps on mobile devices and tablets. In the shift from informational to social media, online culture is increasingly shaping sociality through public displays of connection and taste.

More specifically, media and culture takes up questions surrounding the cultural origins and effects of media, drawing on traditions ranging from media archaeology and genealogy to cultural studies, political economy and critical theory. Media theory, in all its medium-specific diversity remains central as do media research techniques widely applied across the curricula. Substantively, Film studies engages with the transformative shifts in both the materiality as well as the screening of cinema. Cross-media culture addresses the radical transformation of popular media, including television, in the age of mobility, second screens, participatory culture, and global distribution. Global media studies provides means by which film, television and new media may be compared across cultures and borders, and inquires into how the study of media allows us to access the dynamics of globalisation.

The Media and Culture team consists of four professors: next to the chair of Cross-media culture, there are chairs in Film Studies, Digital Heritage and Globalisation. The other team in the department is Media and Information, containing chairs in Journalism, New Media and digital culture, Archival studies, Cultural information studies and Computational and Digital Humanities.

The professor in cross-media culture is expected to play an important role in both BA and MA teaching as well as PhD supervision, in particular in the television and cross-media culture track. In terms of research, this position has closest affinity with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and the National Research School for Media Studies (RMeS), and, pending on the profile of the candidate, the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS).

http://www.uva.nl/en/faculties/faculteit-der-geesteswetenschappen/faculty-of-humanities.html?origin=1cnbpyIQQACPTlEmA0qX3g