The University of Edinburgh is seeking to appoint a Research Fellow who specialises in the Byzantine intellectual and/or cultural history, with background in the history of education or the classical tradition in Byzantium, especially of the middle period (from c.650 to c.1350). The Research Fellow should have a strong interest in exploring and employing cross-cultural approaches to the history of education and empire studies.

This post is part of a comparative research project focusing on the Byzantine and medieval Chinese (Tang/Song) empires, ‘Classicising learning in medieval imperial systems: Cross-cultural approaches to Byzantine paideia and Tang/Song xue’ (PAIXUE), which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC CoG 726371, 2017–2022) and co-directed by Niels Gaul and Curie Virág. It is therefore essential that the postholder be genuinely interested in engaging with Tang/Song learned culture and practices from a comparative vantage point, and willing to develop the requisite skills and methodologies. Research interests in literary mimesis/intertextuality, questions of rhetorical theory, especially êthos and emotions, and/or experience with manuscript studies, or willingness to engage with these, would be an advantage.

The postholder will pursue his/her own research in close cooperation with the project team, and is expected to present the results of his/her work in a scholarly monograph written with a comparative angle and to co-author at least one cross-disciplinary article with a Sinologist team member.

The Research Fellow will become a core member of the small PAIXUE project team that will consist of two Byzantinists and two Sinologists (including the project directors). PAIXUE constitutes the first attempt to study classicising learning and its social, political, and intellectual ramifications systematically and in-depth across two medieval imperial systems, the Byzantine and Tang/Song empires. In addition to advancing each discipline in its own right, one major aim is to integrate these two sophisticated but separate fields in order to develop a more inclusive framework on a specific and well-defined aspect of comparative empire studies and to create a methodology and terminology shareable with other disciplines.

PAIXUE will host three major international conferences, in which the Research Fellow is invited to play an active role.

Vacancy Ref: 042400