Who we are and what we do: We are a multidisciplinary research initiative (https://unifreiburg.de/forschung/forschungsprofil/cas/coloniality-decoloniality/) seeking to understand the impact of coloniality on today’s world and the ways in which people and institutions in all regions of the world, including our own, remember, perpetuate, and contest the legacy of colonialism with a focus on the present day (“now”). Our research engages with coloniality and decoloniality as global phenomena today. We examine transregional processes of interaction, domination, appropriation, contestation, and resistance in light of the asymmetries, hierarchies, and entanglements they engender worldwide.
Reciprocal research is one of the methods we apply. It presupposes close cooperation with colleagues and institutions in the “Global South” and/or “Global East”. We thus seek to upend prevailing hierarchies in which researchers from (former) colonizing societies are the agents, while scholars from (former) colonized countries are either the objects or, at most, assistants, of research. Our aim is to replace this unidirectional model with a bidirectional one and, thus, to offer opportunities to researchers from (formerly) colonized countries to investigate and question in their turn the centers of the modern/colonial world system.
Research foci: Based on our conceptual framework, we have defined five research foci around which we organize research collaboration in our initiative. They allow us to explore the ways in which coloniality, decoloniality, and creolization continue to shape forms of life, narratives, conceptual frameworks, distributions of material and cultural resources, and the mobility of persons, goods, ideas, and knowledge by focusing on specific issues and examining them in depth. These foci are:
- De/Colonial Remembrance
- Geopolitics of epistemic and social practices
- Cultural and material extractivism, resistance and restitution
- Mobilities, borders, translation
- Newly emerging narratives and patterns of coloniality
The successful candidate
- will be a postdoc (PhD no more than 6 years prior to 1 October 2023; due consideration will be given to parental leave, nursing care, and cases of hardship);
- propose a reciprocal tandem project in connection with one or more of the five research foci;
- employed at the University of Freiburg for the duration of the project;
- with one or several tandem partners in other regions of the world.
What we offer:
- a budget of up to EUR 15,000.– (funding period: 1 October 2023 – 30 September 2024). This budget may be used for travel expenses, workshops, technical equipment, employment of student or scientific assistants, and other budgetary needs, according to the regulations of the University of Freiburg;
- full participation in our ongoing activities, such as lectures and workshops;
- the opportunity to present both work-in-progress and the results of the project in our research colloquium;
- mentoring and support with regard to the publication of the results for all persons participating in the tandem.
The application dossier should include:
- project title and description (no more than 5 pages, detailing the topic, the tandem partner(s), the cooperation between applicant and partner(s), the working language of the project, the fit with one or more of our research foci, the innovative potential and the risk involved in this project, and the intended outcome and documentation of research results such as presentations, publications);
- a budget (calculation of estimated expenses; no more than EUR 15,000.–).
- the CVs of the applicant and their tandem partner(s); no more than 2 pages each;
- a list of the most important publications of the applicant and their tandem partner(s); no more than 10 publications each.
- If the working language of the team is a language other than English, applications may be written in that language upon request.
Application due date: August 31, 2023.
The search committee will review the dossiers and select up to three projects within four weeks, so that the successful tandems can begin their cooperation as of 1 October 2023. Later starting dates are possible with the condition that the project will be completed within the indicated funding period.
Please send your application as a PDF file to our coordinator Dr. Ercüment Çelik (ercuement.celik [at] soziologie.uni-freiburg.de).
For further information please contact Dr. Ercüment Çelik (ercuement.celik [at] soziologie.uni-freiburg.de).