Postdoc: Local Socio-Cultural Dynamics and the Holocaust in the Netherlands

Are you a researcher with a background in contemporary political or cultural history and interested in new approaches to the social history of the Holocaust in the Netherlands? Join our team!

Wat ga je doen?

While academic literature presents the Holocaust in the Netherlands as a linear, streamlined Nazi-attack on Jews, centered in Amsterdam and other big cities of Western Holland, over a third of the approximately 104,000 deported Dutch Jews came from small towns and villages. New local studies indicate local differentiations, yet systematic research of the impact of local dynamics on the course of the genocide outside the urban centers of Western Holland and, vice versa, the impact of the genocide on these local dynamics is still lacking. How did local political actors, social structures, associational life, and cultural customs affect the course of the genocide? How did routes of evasion develop, inside and between local communities? And how did local communities recuperate from the years of persecution?

In our project we address these new exciting questions. We turn away from Amsterdam and other big cities, and investigate a carefully chosen selection of provincial towns between 1925 and 1950, combining close-up research with comparative analysis and Digital Humanities methods of data analysis and visualisation. This integrative approach will enable us to explain the role of local political actors (PhD-subproject 1), the impact of (inter)communal networks on Jewish escape (Postdoc-subproject 2) and the entanglement of local social and cultural dynamics with the genocidal process (Postdoc-subproject 3).

As the Postdoc-researcher of subproject 3, you will be pioneering in the field of the socio-cultural history of the Holocaust in the Dutch mediene. Your focus will be the social tissue of communal life, individual relations between Jews and non-Jews and civil society organisations that have thus far often remained out of the scope of investigation. In your research you will be working closely together with other members of the research team that is headed by Geraldien von Frijtag (UU), Ido de Haan (UU) and Dienke Hondius (VU).

You will have the following tasks and responsibilities:

• conducting research within the period of appointment;
• publishing peer-reviewed journal articles and co-editing a volume;
• helping with the organisation of events, workshop or conference;
• participating in project meetings, and closely collaborating with the other members of the research team;
• assisting with knowledge dissemination and other activities of the project;
• presenting research results at national and international workshops and conferences.

Wat breng je mee?

General qualifications:

• You hold a PhD degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, History, Sociology, Anthropology or Cultural studies, or a comparable field.
• You have excellent command of spoken and written Dutch and English.
• You are able to work independently and to write academic publications and publications aimed at wider dissemination of research.
• You have team spirit and experience working with others.
• You have strong interpersonal, analytical and organisational skills.

Wat bieden wij?

We offer:

• a position for 2 years;
• a working week of 32 hours and a gross monthly salary of €4,332 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale 11 of the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
• 8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.