Berlin University Alliance Jobs

In African soci­et­ies, as in all world regions, vari­ous con­cepts of order col­lide and dif­fer­ent scripts com­pete with each other. The post-doc pos­i­tion will be based at the newly estab­lished W-3 pro­fess­or­ship “Con­tem­por­ary Polit­ics and Soci­et­ies in Africa” at the Otto Suhr Insti­tute of Freie Uni­versität Ber­lin. In their research and teach­ing, they will be explor­ing par­al­lel and com­pet­ing con­cepts of order and scripts in con­tem­por­ary African soci­et­ies on mul­tiple scales (local, national, transna­tional), and related dynam­ics of social trans­form­a­tion and polit­ical author­ity.


The Africa pro­fess­or­ship and the asso­ci­ated aca­demic pos­i­tions will be closely linked to the Cluster of Excel­lence "Con­test­a­tions of the Lib­eral Script" (SCRIPTS, http://www.scripts-berlin.eu ). The estab­lish­ment of an Africa research area is an abso­lute pri­or­ity for the cluster and also for the Depart­ment of Polit­ical and Social Sci­ences. An essen­tial struc­tural fea­ture of the Cluster of Excel­lence SCRIPTS is the con­nec­tion between com­par­at­ive social sci­ences and regional stud­ies, with spe­cial emphasis on trans­lo­cal, transna­tional and trans­re­g­ional inter­de­pend­en­cies. These and the cent­ral research ques­tions relat­ing to the status of the lib­eral model of order with a global claim sug­gest a world­wide area of invest­ig­a­tion. It is the declared aim of the Cluster Ini­ti­at­ive to invest­ig­ate the chal­lenge of the lib­eral script in all major world regions.

Job descrip­tion:


• Par­ti­cip­ate in Cluster
• research on cur­rent debates about chan­ging norms and gov­ernance between the poles of global and local crises, region­ally focused on Africa
• Act­ive fur­ther devel­op­ment of cur­rent debates (e.g. on author­it­arian pop­u­lism, re-tra­di­tion­al­isa­tion, post­co­lo­ni­al­ism) from an Africa-focused per­spect­ive
• Devel­op­ment of an inde­pend­ent research pro­ject within the them­atic frame­work of the cluster with empir­ical focus on Africa

Require­ments:
Suc­cess­fully com­pleted doc­tor­ate in a social sci­ence sub­ject (polit­ical sci­ence, inter­na­tional rela­tions, regional stud­ies or sim­ilar)

Desir­able:

• Good know­ledge in the field of research of the cluster, espe­cially in cur­rent debates on the change of norms and gov­ernance in the field of ten­sion of global-local crises, author­it­arian pop­u­lism, re-tra­di­tion­al­isa­tion and post­co­lo­ni­al­ism

• Exper­i­ence in inde­pend­ently con­duct­ing research in sub-Saha­ran Africa
• Good know­ledge of empir­ical research meth­ods

• Exper­i­ence in man­aging research pro­jects
• Exper­i­ence in inde­pend­ently run­ning uni­versity courses
• Very good writ­ten and oral lan­guage skills in Eng­lish and at least one other lan­guage rel­ev­ant to the African con­tin­ent
• Com­mu­nic­a­tion and team skills, inter­cul­tural and gender aware­ness

For fur­ther inform­a­tion, please con­tact Mrs. Prof. Dr. Bet­tina Engels (bettina.engels@fu-berlin.de / 030 838 70989 ).

All applic­a­tions (includ­ing a short cover let­ter out­lining your back­ground, a detailed CV includ­ing pos­sibly some ref­er­ences, and all rel­ev­ant cer­ti­fic­ates) quot­ing the ref­er­ence code should be dir­ec­ted no later than Feb­ru­ary 1st, 2021 prefer­ably elec­tron­ic­ally in one PDF-file to: Mrs. Prof. Dr. Bet­tina Engels: bettina.engels@fu-berlin.de or postal to

Freie Uni­versität Ber­lin
Fachbereich Politik- und Sozi­al­wis­senschaften
Otto-Suhr-Insti­tut für Politikwis­senschaft
Exzel­len­zcluster "Con­test­a­tions of the Lib­eral Script" (SCRIPTS)
Mrs. Prof. Dr. Bet­tina Engels
Ihnestr. 22
14195 Ber­lin (Dah­lem)

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Freie Uni­versität Ber­lin is an equal oppor­tun­ity employer.