UCL IAS Junior Research Fellowships

The Institute of Advanced Studies is seeking to appoint four Junior Research Fellows (JRFs) on appointments of 24 months each.  Candidates should have recently completed (within five years) a PhD in one of the subject areas of either the Faculty of Arts & Humanities or the Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences, and should be able to contribute to one of the following research themes: Laughter or Turbulence.

2018/19 Themes

The Institute of Advanced Studies is pleased to be able to announce its research themes for 2018-2019: Laughter and Turbulence.  These themes have emerged after extensive consultation and discussion with colleagues across the joint faculties and are designed to be capacious and suggestive so that various research-led initiatives and events can be accommodated under their aegis.  We hope to appoint two Junior Research Fellows for two years for each theme. In addition we aim to fund a selection of innovative research-led discussions, conferences and practices related to these themes.  Calls will be widely advertised and will proceed through open competition. Advertisements for the JRFs will go live in March 2018.  Keep an eye on this website for further information.

Each theme is open to the widest possible interpretation and is assumed to address the concerns of many disciplines and departments while providing a frame for thinking across or even bypassing entrenched or established modes of thinking. It may be useful for prospective applicants to know that the conversations we have been having around each have included the following concerns:

Laughter

• External expressions of merriment/amusement: its corporeal/cognitive dimensions
• The politics of laughter: irreverence, mockery, ridicule, revenge, revolutionary mirth/glee
• The aesthetics/poetics of laughter: satire, wit, comic forms, caricature and comedic creations
• The performance/production of laughter: stand up, clowning, mimicry, jokers and fools
• Technologies of laughter: canned, recorded, packaged, produced, pre-planned
• Laughter on line: happy emojis, lol, hahaha, mediations and manipulations of laughing in social networks and new media
• Laughter and feeling: reparation, catharsis, release, empathy
• Dark laughter: last laughs, gallows humour, hysteria, contagion, forced funniness, humiliation, hyperbolic horror
• Weaponised laughter: cruel jokes, taking the piss, winding some-one up, bullies and buffoons
• Defensive laughter: anxiety, embarrassment, fear, unease
• Representation/narration of laughter: infectious, unfunny, unpleasant, inappropriate, palliative
• The laughing body: incontinence, unruliness, excess, falling about, unravelling, porous, seeping

Turbulence

• Chaotic/unpredictable change: unsteady movement, elemental disturbance, liveliness of matter and mood, weather and wind
• Turmoil, instability, upheaval, tumult, unruliness, uncontrolled passions, confusion, unsettlement
• Turbulent times/journeys/environments: materials, flows, natural forces, economies
• Wild and erratic motion, force, intensity, feeling, velocity
• Unpredictability/instability/precarity: of markets, emotions, atoms and areas
• Disruption of forms/genres: radical destabilisation of conventions, precedents, procedures and norms
• Turbulence and aesthetics: melodrama, horror, noise, scale, the sublime
• Turbulence and subjectivity, psychological unpredictability

Duties and Responsibilities

The Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, together with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, established a UCL Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2015. The IAS is a research-based community of scholars comprising colleagues and doctoral students from across UCL as well as visiting fellows and research collaborators/interlocutors from the UK and internationally. It is committed to critical thinking and engaged enquiry both within and across conventional disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and aims to provide a creative and generative context in which to question and dislodge habitual practices and modes of thought.

The IAS is seeking to appoint four Junior Research Fellows (JRFs) starting on 1 October 2018 on appointments of 24 months each. Candidates should have recently completed a PhD in one of the subject areas of either the Faculty of Arts & Humanities or the Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences, and should be able to contribute to one of the following research themes: Laughter or Turbulence.

During Year 1, the JRF will be responsible for pursuing their own research and contributing to the culture of the IAS.  In particular, they will convene a series of high profile academic and public engagement events in relation to their chosen theme. 

During Year 2, the JRF will continue pursuing their own research whilst undertaking undergraduate teaching in a related discipline.  In addition, they will be required to co-edit an appropriate special issue, anthology or online platform related to the programme of events convened in Year 1.

Key Requirements

Candidates should have a PhD or equivalent with expert knowledge within their chosen area of research and the ability to contribute to one of the aforementioned research themes, which should be reflected in the authorship of one or more high quality publications. They will be required to conduct their own research but also facilitate wider disciplinary research on the theme, and be able to demonstrate how their research fits into a broader understanding of the theme. Candidates should also have the ability to give public presentations, work collaboratively and have previous experience of active involvement in research at a university level.

Application

Please complete only the essential fields of the online application form and upload the following documentation as PDF files:

• A CV of no more than two pages, including the contact details of two referees
• A research proposal of no more than 500 words outlining the project, its relationship to the recently completed PhD and the envisaged outcomes (conceivably a couple of articles OR a significant and well-grounded research application in a new area of research, OR a book of the thesis OR other relevant outcome such as an edited volume)
• A 250-word statement on how the candidate’s research relates to the chosen theme.
• A 250-word proposal for activities based in the Institute of Advanced Studies that the JRF will generate: ideas for a series of seminars/workshops; an idea for one conference/event; one public engagement activity that will attract new publics/audiences.

Sections 2, 3 and 4 should be submitted as one document, with clearly labelled sub-headings.  The theme and the chosen UCL department must be clearly stipulated at the top of the document.  If you fail to do this, your application will not be considered.

Applications will be assessed on the quality of the research proposal, relevance to the chosen theme AND the nature of the research-based activities proposed.