Postdoctoral Position in Ethnology and Health Humanities

Postdoctoral Position available at the Copenhagen Centre for Health Research in the Humanities (CoRe). The position will be part of the Carlsberg Foundation funded Semper Ardens Accomplish project: Skin Health: New Biocultural Zones of Contact.

The Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen is inviting applications for one three-year postdoctoral position in the field of Ethnology and Health Humanities, starting 1 December 2024, or as soon as possible thereafter.

The position is fixed term, full-time and will last for 36 months in total.

Introduction

The Skin Health project explores current skin health practices between everyday life, medical knowledge, industrial interests and aesthetic norms. The skin is our largest organ, a key player in health, and a vital part of our cultural, social, and political fabric. A damaged or ill skin can produce serious social stigma and personal trauma and activate mechanisms of exclusion. Engaging with these issues, the project’s overall aim is to advance a more nuanced understanding of skin health focusing on the crucial relations between scientific, commercial and everyday skin practices. Skin health and skin care practices will be investigated by means of historical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, and explore the prevailing discourses, medical, technological and everyday practices that define our cultural understanding and engagement with skin health.

The postdoctoral project is specifically expected to contribute to the Skin Health project by ethnographically and historically investigating the knowledge production of skin i.e., how scientific understandings of skin construct the way we think and practice skin. Inspired by current debates and activism on ‘decolonizing dermatology’ the project sets out to investigate the medical history of dermatology, where categories such as gender, race, class and morality have shaped not only the medical but also popular understandings of skin. Furthermore, by applying a future-oriented approach the project will investigate the current intensified scientific interest in artificial skin (robotics and skin grown in laboratories) and skin microbiome habitats (the skin as a living landscape).

Applicants, who wish further information about the position and the research project, should contact Principal Investigator prof. Astrid Pernille Jespersen, apj@hum.ku.dk, phone +45 20972205. 

Application

Applications must be submitted online in PDF or Word format. Click on the “Apply now” button at the bottom of this advertisement to apply.

Applications must be written in English and must include the following attachments

• Letter of motivation
• CV
• Documentation of qualifications (exam certificates and PhD diploma) 
• Complete publication list (attached publications must be marked with an asterisk). The list must be structured systematically and divided into the following categories:

• • Peer-reviewed publications:
    • Monographs and anthologies
    • Articles in journals
    • Book chapters/anthology contributions, etc.
  • Non-peer-reviewed publications:
    • Publications disseminating research findings, etc.

Applicants can attach a maximum of three publications. The publication dates must be clearly marked on the list. The selected publications must be uploaded as attachments and numbered [1-3]. 

• Research plan
• Documentation of teaching competencies/teaching portfolio (see the UCPH guidelines for teaching portfolios here) and other work on the dissemination of research.

Only documentation and material in English, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish will be assessed.

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