Call For Applications, Deadline for application: 15 September 2023

Call For Applications - Praemium Academiae Postdoctoral Position 2024 – 2026

Project  title:  ‘RESOURCE Project’  -  Research on  Environmental Sustainability and on  the  Use of Resources in Central European Households

Location: Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia

Postdoctoral position, 3 years

Deadline for application: 15 September 2023

We are pleased to announce a position available in the project funded by the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Job Title: Postdoctoral Researcher

Position:

As a postdoctoral researcher, you will be a member of a research team within the project ‘Research on Environmental Su  stainability and on the Use of Resources in Central European Households’ (RESOURCE Project) led by Dr. Petr Jehlička in cooperation with Dr. Daniel Sosna and funded by the Praemium Academia grant from the Czech Academy of Sciences. You will conduct research activities in the Netherlands, looking at household practices concerning water consumption and food waste generation with an emphasis placed on better understanding frugality and resource conservation.

Job information at a glance Start date: 1 January 2024

Duration: 3 years

FTE: full-time position

Workplace: Prague

Gross salary: 66,000 CZK (approximately 2700 EUR per month)

Your qualifications

• Ph.D. in (environmental) anthropology, human geography, sociology, or related discipline.
• Keen interest in the Project’s key concepts such as household, sustainable consumption, frugality, and thrift.
• Proficiency in the Dutch language and excellent oral and written English skills are required.
• Solid knowledge of, and experience with a range of research methods.
• Capacity to work both independently and collaboratively.
• Writing skills manifested in a high-quality Ph.D. dissertation and peer-reviewed academic publications.
• Capacity to present at international conferences and to contribute to communications aimed at the general public (website, social media).

We offer

• Opportunities to work within an innovative research.
• Funding for fieldwork, publishing and conference attendance.
• Training seminars and workshops to further professional development.
• Institutional affiliation with the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
• Friendly and supportive working environment in the city centre of Prague.

Application process

The application must contain the following documents:

• Motivation letter
• CV
• Sample of published work in English
• Copies of university degrees and official transcripts
• The names and contact details of two potential referees

The deadline for the application is 15 September 2023, 5 pm CET. Please email a single pdf file to office@eu.cas.cz under the subject ‘RESOURCE Project Postdoc.’

About the Project

The RESOURCE Project aims to meet two key objectives. Drawing on extensive empirical work in Czechia and the Netherlands on household food waste production and water consumption, the first key objective is to produce important insights into households’ frugal resource use. In this sense, the Project has an agenda-setting ambition in relation to global academic knowledge production as it seeks to inform and shape key social scientific debates and theorisations on the sustainability of everyday household practices of the use of resources. The findings concerning the diverse degrees of household resource efficiency in the two social contexts provide a basis for the Project’s second key objective. It is the understanding of the dynamic of international scholarly communication and its underlying material and discursive power structures  that determine the uneven adoption of knowledge on resource use as either from specific social contexts as ‘universal’ or ‘marginal’ and peripheral’. Ultimately, the Project will seek to propose ways of altering this hierarchy of knowledge.

About the Institution

The Institute of Ethnology pursues both basic and applied research. The Institute currently hosts two ERC projects. The Department of Ecological Anthropology, where the project is based, draws on a vibrant and evolving form of scholarship nested in a broad array of intellectual traditions and theoretical approaches including science studies, economic anthropology, subaltern studies, more- than-human geography, human-animal studies and environmental humanities. This scholarship examines how socio-cultural worlds emerge through the ongoing interaction between humans, geographical features, animals, plants, microbiomes, technologies, materials and other nonhumans.

Further information

For further information please contact Dr. Petr Jehlička (jehlicka@eu.cas.cz).