Deadline: 25-Jan-23
The Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien invites scholars to apply for up to five postdoctoral fellowships for the academic year 2023/2024 for the research program Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe (EUME).
Purpose
- Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe (EUME) seeks to rethink key concepts and premises that link and divide Europe and the Middle East. The program draws on the international expertise of a growing network of scholars in and outside of Germany and is embedded in university and extra-university research institutions in and outside of Berlin.
- EUME supports historical-critical philology, rigorous engagement with the literatures of the Middle East and their histories, the social history and life of cities and the study of Middle Eastern political and philosophical thought as central fields of research not only for area or cultural studies, but also for European intellectual history and other academic disciplines. The program explores modernity as a historical space and conceptual frame. EUME is interested in questions relating to ongoing transformation processes in Europe and the Middle East, in re-imaginations of the past and present that contribute to free, pluralistic and just societies.
Programmatic Ideas
The program puts forward three programmatic ideas:
- supporting research that demonstrates the rich and complex historical legacies and entanglements between Europe and the Middle East;
- re-examining genealogical notions of mythical ‘origins’, and ‘purity’ in relation to culture and society; and
- rethinking key concepts of a shared modernity and future in light of contemporary cultural, social, and political divisions and entanglements that supersede identity discourses as well as national, cultural or regional canons and epistemologies that were established in the nineteenth century.
Themes
- EUME supports and rests upon interconnected research fields and themes that mark the open framework for the fellowship program that constitutes EUME:
- Travelling Traditions: Comparative Perspectives on Near Eastern Literatures represented by Friederike Pannewick (Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies/Department for Arabic Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg) and Samah Selim (Rutgers University) reassesses literary entanglements and processes of translation and canonization between Europe and the Middle East.
- Cities Compared: Governance, Consultative Mechanisms and Plurality represented by Ulrike Freitag and Nora Lafi (both Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) contributes to the debates on civil society, deliberation, opinion formation, citizenship, migration and mobilization from the experience of cultural and religious differences in cities around the Mediterranean and beyond.
- Tradition and the Critique of Modernity: Secularism, Fundamentalism and Religion from Middle Eastern Perspectives represented by Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva) tries to rethink key concepts of modernity in the context of experiences, interpretations, and critiques from the Middle East in order to contribute to a more inclusive language of culture, politics and community.
- Politics and Processes of Change, Archaeologies of the Present, and Imaginations of the Future are research themes that emerged during the last years and are represented by the work of several EUME Fellows and members of the Collegium (e.g. Cilja Harders, Friederike Pannewick, Rachid Ouaissa).
- Since 1997, more than 350 scholars from and of the Middle East have been EUME Fellows, who, by their scholarly projects, engagement, and their inquiries into the order of knowledge, society and politics, shape the academic program of EUME that is coordinated by Georges Khalil, Jessica Metz, Claudia Pfitzner and Wiebke Harlis at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
Benefits
- The fellowships start on 1 October 2023 and will end on 31 July 2024. Postdoctoral fellows will receive a monthly stipend of 2,500 € plus supplements depending on their personal situation.
- Organisational support regarding visa, insurance, housing, etc. will be provided. Fellows are obliged to work in Berlin and to help shape the seminars and working discussions related to their research field. The working language of EUME is English.
- Successful applicants will be fellows of EUME at the Forum Transregionale Studien, and associate members of one of the university or non-university research institutes listed below or connected to the Forum Transregionale Studien.
- Fellows gain the opportunity to pursue research projects of their own choice within the framework of Europe in the Middle East—the Middle East in Europe.
Eligibility Criteria
- The fellowships are intended primarily for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who want to carry out their research projects in connection with the Berlin program.
- The fellowships are intended to contribute to the mobility of researchers, and are primarily addressed to scholars from outside Germany. They especially encourage scholars from the Middle East to apply.
- Applicants should be at the postdoctoral level and should have obtained their doctorate within the last seven years.
- As the number of fellowships is limited they invite interested scholars also to apply with their own or for external funding.
For more information, visit Forum Transregionale Studien.