The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of Vrije University Amsterdam is searching for a new assistant professor. The department stands out in the Netherlands and worldwide as a research group focused on making a scientific impact within and outside academia. We practice anthropology and ethnography with direct participation of and relevance to research participants and in the interest of non-academic and broader audiences. We also teach our students ways to apply anthropology in their future careers.
The impact we aim to have is transformative and emancipatory for research participants, stakeholders, and society. The research engagement starts with societal demands, challenges, and questions about inequality and injustice. We do not claim instant solutions but try to ask better questions. We are committed to long-term engagement.
As an assistant professor, you will be active in teaching, do research and play a significant role in our Ethnographic Impact Lab. The standard allocation of time is 65% for teaching, 30% for research, and 5% for administrative tasks; external funding may increase research time. However, all staff is always required to teach, and we value good teaching as much as good research.
The department is responsible for a bachelor and master programme in anthropology and contributes to courses given to all disciplines of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Research Master in social sciences, and the graduate school for PhD students. The bachelor programme is offered in English and Dutch, and the master's is in English; the coming academic year we will begin a new professional track in our master's. Your teaching tasks will be aligned with the teaching done by other team members.
Our research is organised into a thematic programme called Mobilities, Beliefs, and Belonging: Confronting Global Inequalities and Insecurities, which is currently under review. The departments' ethnographic research covers various subdisciplines in anthropology and development studies and is conducted in many different countries. You will have considerable autonomy to develop your line of research and this position is open to a wide range of subject specialisms. For example, we welcome expertise in multimodal methodologies and digital anthropology, and anthropologists working on borders and identities, to name just a few possibilities. However, you are expected to broadly engage one of two research themes from the national
Sectorplan for Social Sciences: "Inequality & diversity", or "Human impact and new technology".
Alongside our teaching and research, we are developing an Ethnographic Impact Lab to frame and reinforce our research group's engagement and societal advancements. You will also help build the new Ethnographic Impact Lab and explore what impact we could have and how to give substance to our work's collaborative, engaged nature.
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology is an international community. It has a relatively flat hierarchy in which the views and ideas of assistant professors are taken into consideration just as much as those of full professors. All staff members are expected to play an active role in creating a safe and stimulating academic environment. We seek a colleague who knows how to balance personal ambition with a willingness to take on community work within the academic community.
Your duties
- Teach courses in social and cultural anthropology at the bachelor's and master's level
- Supervise bachelor and master students, and co-supervise PhD students
- Do research, both alone or in teams, resulting in internationally recognized, peer-reviewed publications
- Apply for external research funding
- Contribute to the various efforts of our department to make anthropology matter and have impact on society
- Contribute actively to the scholarly community of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, including occasional managerial tasks
Ideally, you can assume your duties by 1 August 2023, teaching your first class in September.