Postdoctoral Researcher in the Cultural Imaginary of Environmental Violence

Utrecht University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher in the ERC Consolidator Grant project “Ecologies of Violence: Crimes against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination [EcoViolence]”.

Your job

As a postdoctoral researcher you will be working on a subproject within the Consolidator Grant project EcoViolence (2024–2029) funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and directed by Dr Susanne C. Knittel (Principal Investigator, PI) at the Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication. EcoViolence is an interdisciplinary, transnational, and comparative study of the cultural imaginary of environmental violence. The project’s aim is to understand how contemporary culture frames and remembers environmental degradationas violence; how it can make visible the deep historical roots that tie eco-violence to other histories of violence, especially colonialism and genocide; and how it articulates and reflects on questions of guilt, responsibility, and implication. EcoViolence will bring together research in cultural memory studies and ecocriticism in order to develop an innovative ecological model for the study of violence, its memory and representation. Furthermore, the project explores how these representations harness affect and emotion to promote critical self-reflection. The project focuses on narrative and visual media and takes a comparative, multilingual, and media-specific approach.The subproject 'Images of EcoViolence' will focus on the aesthetic, political, and affective dimensions of contemporary documentary film. It will contribute to current debates on the role of visual culture in representing eco-violence and its links to other histories and structures of violence. As an investigative genre par excellence, based on a discourse of evidence, truth, and social representation, documentaries are a particularly fruitful site for the representation of large-scale violence and a critical engagement with questions of guilt, responsibility, and implication. The corpus will consist of a range of different types of documentaries: from mainstream productions to more experimental, independent films. The approach will be transnational/transcultural and multilingual, and the methodology will be comparative, visual, and media analysis as well as discourse analysis. Your research will draw on recent scholarship in cultural memory studies, ecocriticism – specifically eco-cinema, and affect theory to analyse the cinematic and rhetorical techniques, as well as the use of mediation, remediation, testimony, data, and evidence in these films. You will furthermore explore the place of these films within a larger media ecology, focusing especially on the growing number of environmental film festivals.

You will have the following tasks and responsibilities:

• conducting research within the period of appointment;
• publishing peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters;
• co-editing one special journal issue with the PI;
• helping with the organisation of workshops and an international conference;
• participating in project meetings, and closely collaborating with the other members of the research team;
• helping with setting up and managing project data;
• assisting with knowledge dissemination and other activities of the project;
• presenting research results at national and international workshops and conferences.

Your qualities

• You hold a PhD degree in a relevant field (e.g. film studies, media studies, visual culture, cultural analysis) at the time of appointment.
• You have a proven track record of academic publications.
• You have excellent command of spoken and written English.
• You have very good reading and speaking ability of at least one of the following languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch. Knowledge of other world languages is desirable but not required.
• You have a demonstrable background in one or more of the research fields central to the project: film studies, visual culture studies, cultural memory studies, ecocriticism/eco-cinema, postcolonial or decolonial theory, affect theory, posthumanism.
• You have team spirit and experience working in an interdisciplinary, international setting.
• You are willing to travel abroad for research stays, conferences and workshops.
• You have strong interpersonal, analytical and organisational skills.

Our offer

• A part-time position for 12 months, with an extension of up to 12 months after a positive evaluation (for a total maximum duration of 24 months);
• a working week of 30-32 hours (part-time) and a gross monthly salary between €4,227 and €4,537 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale 10.5, 11.0 under 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.