The research cluster “Trans­lo­ca­tions” at the Insti­tute for Art His­tory and His­tor­ical Urban Stud­ies at the Tech­nis­che Uni­versität Ber­lin is seek­ing to hire two postdoc­toral research­ers for its team. The pro­ject is fun­ded through the Gottfried Wil­helm Leib­niz-Prize of the DFG, awar­ded to Prof. Dr. Béné­dicte Savoy in 2016. The research cluster will study large-scale dis­place­ments of cul­tural assets from antiquity to the 20th cen­tury such as: art theft and spo­li­ation organized by the state in times of war and occu­pa­tion, seizure of cul­tural goods dur­ing colo­ni­al­ism, dis­place­ments as a res­ult of a par­ti­tion of excav­a­tion discov­er­ies or research exped­i­tions, mater­ial dia­spora of entire civil­iz­a­tions exped­ited by the art trade, and con­fis­ca­tions jus­ti­fied through ideo­logy, national­iz­a­tion, or en masse dis­posal of private prop­erty. The key object­ive of “Trans­lo­ca­tions” is to com­pile a com­pre­hens­ive selec­tion of his­tor­ical find­ings in order to deliver ori­ent­a­tion and dir­ec­tion for deal­ing with the chal­lenges posed by this topic now and in the future.

The can­did­ate will have the oppor­tun­ity to pur­sue his or her own research interests within the con­text of an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary team and the over­all research goals of the pro­ject cluster. This includes the devel­op­ment and exe­cu­tion of both inde­pend­ent and team-based stud­ies. The can­did­ate will inde­pend­ently pro­duce work for aca­demic pub­lic­a­tion and work within the team on the four found­a­tional pro­jects of the research cluster (a digital atlas, a vir­tual lib­rary, a glossary, and an image rep­er­tory). The can­did­ate will also be involved in the organ­iz­a­tion of aca­demic events and the man­age­ment of the pro­ject cluster.

Requirements

• Can­did­ates must have com­pleted a uni­versity degree (Dip­lom, Mas­ter, or equi­val­ent) as well as a com­pleted doc­toral degree (or expec­tedly com­pleted until 01/09/17), in a dis­cip­line related to the pro­ject (art his­tory, his­tory, arche­ology, area stud­ies, lit­er­at­ure, cul­tural stud­ies, or eth­no­logy; depend­ing on research focus, can­did­ates from the legal sci­ences, soci­ology, or other related fields will also be con­sidered)
• Research interest and aca­demic exper­i­ence related to the topic of the pro­ject cluster
• His­tor­ical know­ledge of at least one of the rel­ev­ant regions and peri­ods
• Very good Eng­lish and Ger­man lan­guage skills
• Pro­fi­ciency in at least one other lan­guage rel­ev­ant to the pro­ject is a plus (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Rus­sian, Turk­ish)
• Can­did­ates should prefer­ably have exper­i­ence and be com­fort­able work­ing in an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary team, and pos­sess excel­lent col­lab­or­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion skills