Research fellows

Focusing on Medieval or Early Modern Europe (excluding Britain) this Postdoctoral Research Fellowship will be awarded to an individual with proven capacity for research in this area and strong potential to contribute to the ‘Change’ program generally. Applicants for this position are invited to submit a brief (i.e. two-page) proposal for the research they would carry out under the fellowship.

Focusing on the emotional history of law, government, and society in Britain during the period 1700-1830, this Postdoctoral Research Fellowship will be awarded to an individual with strong aptitude for research in this area and the potential to contribute to the ‘Change’ program generally. The successful candidate will work on a project studying the affective family, the press and the law in Britain.

The successful candidate will contribute to a project exploring the emotions created in response to sacred space in late medieval and early modern Europe. Particular attention will be paid to the rituals, performances and objects which turned these sites into places of direct collective and personal emotional experience, and also elicited indirect emotion on a local, regional or national level through extended memory.

The successful candidate will contribute to a project exploring the ways medieval, early modern and modern texts describe and represent emotion, with a special focus on the language used to describe emotional expression on the human face. Though based within the ‘Shaping the Modern’ Program of the Centre of Excellence this project will also contribute to other programs of the Centre’s work. The project aims to track changes in the literary and textual strategies used to describe the expression of emotion, especially on the human face, leading up to the analysis of the first contacts between European settlers and non-European races, with a particular focus on those contacts in Australia.

The successful candidates will be interested in working on a topic broadly related to the distinction between reason and passion in any field of English literature from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and will be expected to undertake a program of high-quality research and publication. Applicants require a PhD in a relevant field of English literature. An interest in the wider intellectual, religious, historical, or cultural contexts of literature will be favourably considered. Knowledge of related Continental European, or classical, literatures may also be an advantage.

These Fixed-term, full-time positions are available for three years.
Salary: (Level A, Step 6) $67,958 per annum, plus an employer superannuation contribution of 17% applies.
For further information regarding the position please contact Professor Peter Holbrook, p.holbrook@uq.edu.au
Application Details: For position information go to: http://www.uq.edu.au/staff/
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
The University of Sydney is seeking to appoint two three-year post-doctoral research fellows to work in the ‘Meanings’ Program of CHE under the leadership of Dr Juanita Ruys
Research Fellowship in Emotions related to Suicidal Impulse (Level A, Step 6) (Ref 160/0111)

This fellowship will involve work on a project aimed at developing a textual history of the emotions related to the suicidal impulse from medieval to early modern times. The project will require close literary study of texts in the language of the applicant’s specialty, and may involve research in international archives and libraries. The primary outcome for the project will be a jointly authored monograph by the postdoctoral fellow and research leader.

This fellowship will involve work on a project dealing with emotional responses to public death (execution) in the later Middle Ages and early modern period. It will focus on categorizing and analysing public reaction to the spectacle of death and aim to reveal where possible the range of emotions performed by the condemned on the scaffold. Research in international archives and libraries may be necessary. It is envisaged that the primary outcome of the Fellowship will be a monograph. In addition, the applicant will be working with a PhD student who will be studying a range of texts written by condemned prisoners awaiting execution. Therefore an ability to mentor and work collaboratively with a developing researcher is required. (Actual supervision of the PhD itself however is not required but will be undertaken by the Chief Investigator).

The successful candidate will work on a project analysing the interpretations and expressions of emotion in archival and non-fictional sources in one of the major socio-cultural groups of Europe (excluding Britain) in the period 1300-1500. Particular attention will be paid to the manifestations of mass communal emotions in that culture.