The Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, invites applications for one or two assistant professorships, focusing on core themes within the centre’s agenda for research on urban societies in the past.

The call is for full-time, three-year positions, starting on 1 June 2017 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The positions represent an opportunity for eminent young researchers to set the agenda for research into the historical archaeology and/or archaeoscience of urban societies and networks from the Hellenistic Period to the Middle Ages, and to participate in one of Europe’s most groundbreaking archaeological research initiatives of this decade.

We are looking to include researchers and their projects in the centre’s work, which integrates questions and problems relating to the humanities and concerning urban development and networks.

The Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) explores the archaeology and history of urban societies and their networks from the Ancient Mediterranean to medieval Northern Europe and to the Indian Ocean World. We are an interdisciplinary research initiative which integrates new methods from the natural sciences with context-cultural studies rooted in the humanities. Approaching urbanism as a network dynamic, we aim to develop a high-definition archaeology to determine how urban networks catalysed societal and environmental expansions and crises in the past.

The centre’s work ranges from Northern Europe over the Levant to the East Coast of Africa. It involves empirical material from a number of existing excavation projects as well as material which has already been excavated, and concerns both theoretical and methodological issues. UrbNet strives to embrace and connect the archaeological research clusters at Aarhus University with new and advanced analytical techniques in geoscience and physics for dating and characterising archaeological sites; and creates a research environment for cross-fertilising approaches from the humanities and sciences. The centre is based at Aarhus University, School of Culture and Society, and is funded as a Centre of Excellence by the Danish National Research Foundation.

We are looking for researchers with a strong research profile in subjects such as comparative urban archaeology, the material culture of exchanged objects and materials, or the cultural perceptions and activities behind the formation of urban stratigraphies. The research should relate to one or more of the centre’s focus areas, including the era between the Hellenistic Period and the end of the Middle Ages in the regions targeted by the centre’s initiatives: Northern Europe, the Levant or the East Coast of Africa.

The positions offer unique opportunities for carrying out cross-disciplinary research, and the successful applicant(s) will be expected to play an active part in the centre’s daily activities. The successful applicant(s) will also be expected to participate in both teaching and research related to the centre’s initiatives and to advance the centre’s research agenda in general.

We are looking for researchers working on intersecting questions and problems concerning urban development and networks. Projects should align with one or more of the core agendas of the centre:

• How does the combination of multiple methods and approaches help to characterise the material and/or social biographies of urban sites in the past?
• How does the contextual study of archaeological data, including scientific and historical analysis, clarify the structure, dynamics and agency of urban networks in different periods and regions?
• How do high-definition chronologies, site biographies and recorded history integrate as synthetic accounts of urban societies?