The Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH) currently has a vacant Postdoc researcher position as part of the project Jewish Urban Cultures, led by Prof. I.E. (Irene) Zwiep and Prof. Bart Wallet. ASH is one of the five Research Schools within the
Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research. The school represents and fosters the study of the human past from Antiquity to the present day. It brings together about 200 academics who participate in three research centres, including the
Amsterdam Centre of Urban History (ACUH), and 20 research groups.
What are you going to do?The department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies is currently developing a centre of expertise in Jewish Urban Studies. We want to create an environment where the dynamics of Jewish urban cultures are studied diachronically and synchronically, with an emphasis on Western Europe in the early modern and modern period. As a postdoc, you will be part of this new initiative and play an important role in its development. Your own project will be at the heart of a larger collaborative research project, currently under construction, on the Jewish and non-Jewish perception and conservation of (former) Jewish sites and quarters in Western European cities after 1945. Using Amsterdam as a case study, your project will help build its methodological basis, by mapping the changing definitions, demarcations and meanings attributed to Jewish places and spaces in the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
You will be joining the project in an early, dynamic phase. This means that you will have the opportunity to help determine its course by contributing to the collaborative grant application, co-organizing international meetings, and working together with our new network officer to help lay the basis for a digital
Atlas of Jewish Urban Cultures. Participating in our annual Travelling Winterschool is also a possibility. Throughout the project, you will work together closely with the two PIs, with the department's graduate students, and with professionals from the Amsterdam Jewish heritage collections. You can also develop ties and collaborate with colleagues at ASH and at the Centre of Urban History in particular.
Your tasks and responsibilities:As indicated above, your project, expertise and ideas will play an important role in developing an Amsterdam centre of expertise in Jewish Urban Studies with international aspirations. Your tasks and responsibilities will include:
- conducting research, presenting your results at workshops and conferences and publishing two peer-reviewed articles;
- contributing your expertise to the collaborative grant application and the digital Atlas of Jewish Urban Cultures;
- co-organizing an international conference;
- participating in the Travelling Winterschool;
- participating in meetings of the project research group;
- co-organizing outreach and dissemination activities;
- contributing to teaching.