The interdisciplinary Research Training Group 1876 "Early Concepts of Man and Nature: Universal, Local, Borrowed" established by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz invites applications for 6 doctoral positions (wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in, 13 TV-L 65%) starting on October 1st, 2016. Initial appointment will be for two years. Subject to continued funding by the German Research Foundation, a further appointment for one more year will be made.
The Research Training Group is directed by scholars from the fields of Egyptology, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Near Eastern Archaeology, Classical Archaeology, Classics, Byzantine Studies, Medieval German Studies, and Medical History.
In the Research Training Group's research programme, the object is to record concepts of man and nature in the Northeast African, Near Eastern, and European area in the period from ca. 3200 BC until the Middle Ages – starting out from textual, pictorial and material sources – by means of examples and to study them in a culturally immanent as well as transcultural respect. In order to align the spectrum of potential fields of topics in a targeted manner four main focal points of research have been defined:
- The origin of the World and the primordial elements;
- Natural phenomena, the forces of nature, and natural catastrophes;
- Flora, fauna, and landscape;
- The conceptualization of the human body, of disease and healing.
Topics for PhD theses must be chosen from one of these four areas and belong to one of the academic the disciplines mentioned above.