A postdoctoral researcher in the field of history or memory studies to investigate the politicisation of famine legacies in Ukraine and Russia.
You will work as part of a team on the NWO-funded NWA-ORC project
Heritages of Hunger: Societal Reflections on Past European Famines in Education, Commemoration and Musealisation (NWA.1160.18.197). This project is conducted by researchers at Wageningen University, Radboud University Nijmegen, and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.
Heritages of Hunger investigates how educational practices (at schools, heritage sites, museums, or surrounding commemorative practices) can create awareness of famines as heritages of shared experiences and past solidarity among European communities. The case studies to be examined through a comparative approach are connected to episodes of war (Belgium and Germany during and after WWI; the Netherlands, Russia and Greece during WWII, Germany after WWII); neglect and ecological crisis (nineteenth-century Ireland, Finland) and oppression (interbellum Spain, Ukraine). Furthermore, the project addresses the significant impact of famine legacies in education and heritage practices of European immigrant communities across the globe.
Your postdoctoral research project,
Famine Legacies in Ukraine and Russia, investigates how memories of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 ('Holodomor') and the Leningrad Blockade of 1941-44 function in education and the heritage sector. In particular, this project will examine discourses of victimhood/perpetrator and solidarity in curricula, commemorations and museum exhibitions in Ukraine and Russia. How have past and present teaching and commemoration practices given shape to these troubled histories? What role have they played and do they continue to play in international relations? And in what respects do these commemorations and educational practices embed themselves in larger, transnational narratives of oppression, hunger and war?
Your research is to result in scientific publications (min. 2 peer-reviewed articles). Furthermore, you will assist in the development of the educational resources by the project team. You are also expected to actively contribute to the project's programme of meetings, both with respect to substance and organisationally (e.g., expert meetings, conferences, public events).
You will conduct the research at the
Rural and Environmental History Group and will participate in the research programme of this chair group.