Deadline for Applications: May 01, 2017
7 ONE-YEAR POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONS AY 2017-2018
School of Advanced Studies of the University of Tyumen
Having completed the first round of hiring for faculty to work in three multidisciplinary teams starting August 2017, we now seek to fill seven postdoctoral fellowships to supplement the teams with necessary expertise.The SAS postdoctoral fellowships will last one academic year and will involve research and teaching at the SAS BA program. Salary will be individually determined based on the candidate’s qualifications. Fellows will also receive funds for research travel and medical insurance; relocation expenses will also be covered. All fellows will be eligible to apply for permanent faculty positions in the second round of the SAS faculty recruitment in Spring, 2018.
Please submit your application via e-mail to sas@utmn.ru. Include a cover letter, explaining your potential contribution to one of the three projects outlined below, a full CV, and three letters of recommendation (letters should be submitted to the same e-mail address, either directly by your recommenders, or through an appropriate service such as Interfolio). Applications will be considered until the positions are filled; preference will be given to those received by May 1, 2017. All applicants with relevant expertise are encouraged to apply. The more specific profiles listed below should not be seen as restrictive. All qualified applicants, including those who propose other contributions to the SAS projects, will be given the fullest consideration. For more information on the SAS and the projects, please, go to http://sas.utmn.ru/en/research/.
Project 1: CAPITALIST TRANSFORMATIONS: HIDDEN RESISTANCE AND ECONOMIC THEORY
The goal of this project is to critically investigate contemporary capitalism from the dual perspective of qualitative sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, on the one hand, and economics, on the other. We hope to shed light on the connections between recent political-economic crises of capitalism and multifarious resistance to capitalism. While there is a considerable literature on adaptation and resistance provoked by imbalances of contemporary capitalism, the particular economic mechanisms underlying these developments often remain hidden. Applications are especially encouraged from:
• specialists in political economy interested in studying crises and imbalances of contemporary capitalist economies. Neoliberal reforms, the dynamics of labor markets, forms of labor, and exploitation might be among the research topics. Familiarity with institutionalist and “varieties of capitalism” research approaches to capitalism is an advantage.
• specialists in macroeconomics and/or institutional theory, with skills in economic modelling, statistics, and econometrics, as well as recent institutional economics approaches to macroeconomics.
Project 2: FREE WILL: IMPLICATIONS OF STATE-OF-THE-ART RESEARCH IN NATURAL SCIENCES FOR HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
The broad goal of this multidisciplinary project is to critically investigate the concept of free will in natural science (neuroscience and physics) and to study the implications of an upgraded theory of free will for the most relevant disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. Important questions are: how to reconcile our obvious feeling of being free agents, with recent findings in natural science? How to conceive of moral and legal responsibility / autonomy in view of a refined concept of free will? What are some of the most important consequences and lessons humanities and social sciences can draw from an informed debate on free will? Applications are especially encouraged from:
• specialists in neuroscience, neurobiology or a related discipline with experience in Libet-like experiments in neuroscience and the ability to facilitate collaborations with institutions where such experiments can be carried out, as well as interest in foundational (‘philosophical’) questions related to free will;
• specialists in analytic philosophy (e.g. philosophy of science, or a related field), interested in critical investigation of the most prominent theories of free will in (analytic) philosophy and neuroscience in order to derive synthetic views leading to one or a handful of powerful‘working’ definitions of free will with experience or interest in investigating theimplications of such ‘working’ definitions in legal philosophy, history, and other disciplines;
• specialists in legal theory interested in critically investigation of whether current legal systems are grounded in the theological, philosophical and
ethical doctrines on human moral autonomy, or in development of a comparative case study including at least two legal systems that assume different positions on human decision making.
Project 3: MATERIAL RELATIONS: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE ON MATERIALITY AND SUBJECTIVITY
This team, comprised of humanities and social sciences scholars, is looking beyond the Cartesian view of the relations between humans and materials as rooted in the ideal of human reason’s dominion over the physical environment. In our preliminary conversations we have drawn on Vitalist, Augustinian, and Indigenous theories to form a tentative hypothesis that many – perhaps all – material relationships can productively be described in terms of love, understood as political, pathological or affective, as erotic pleasure-seeking or a self-denying concession to the reality of others. We intend to augment our humanistic theories with scientific data that may draw on social media behavior, the construction of identities through consumer activity, and biological research on ecosystems and organism-environment relationality. Applications are especially encouraged from:
• specialists in consumer behavior, social media and community formation, material exchange in society, or related topic. Candidate should have experience with quantitative methods and data analysis;
• specialists in ecology, biology, biochemistry, or cybernetics working on symbiosis, substantiating feedback loops, biosemiotics, or even chemical bonds, biochemical pathways, photosynthesis, metabolism, sexual reproduction, genetics, or virology.