Three Post-doctoral Fellowships - Intertextuality and Text reuse in the Middle East (London) [EN]

 Three Post-doctoral Fellowships - Intertextuality and Text reuse in the Middle East (London) [EN]

Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisation

London, United Kingdom

PRESENTATION

The Aga Khan University-ISMC is seeking three post-doctoral research fellows to work with an international and interdisciplinary group of investigators for the European Research Council-funded project, an exciting and ambitious digital humanities project: KITAB (Knowledge, Information Technology, and the Arabic Book – see http://kitab-project.org/). The project, led by Sarah Bowen Savant (Aga Khan University-ISMC) is focused on the way that texts were “reused” in the period of 700–1500 across the Arabic speaking world. We are specifically interested in what the recycling of texts can reveal about the history of books in this period, and more deeply, about how memory was generated in the pre-modern Middle East.

In order to cover the 5 strands of the KITAB project (based on geographical areas):

• One fellow will be selected to work on Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula from the 8th century onward. S/he will work in collaboration with the two other post-doctoral research fellows as well as the PI and the Research Associate to complete the 5 strands of the project (Egypt, Iraq, the Islamic West, Syria and Bilad al-Sham, and the Islamic East).
• One fellow will be selected to work on Egypt from the 8th century onward. S/he will work in collaboration with the two other post-doctoral research fellows as well as the PI and the Research Associate to complete the 5 strands of the project (Iraq, the Islamic West, Egypt, Syria and Bilad al-Sham, and the Islamic East). Former research on the Mamluk period will be an asset.
• One fellow will be selected to work on the Islamic West, to include Islamic Spain and the Maghreb, from the 8th century onward. S/he will work in collaboration with the two other post-doctoral research fellows as well as the PI and the Research Associate to complete the 5 strands of the project (the Islamic West, Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Bilad al-Sham, and the Islamic East).

Successful candidates will be offered a two-year full-time fixed-term position to start on the 1st of March 2019.

Incumbents will receive a gross annual salary of £33,000 and an annual research budget of £500. Please note that accommodation in London will need to be independently organised by the Fellow. Other benefits include: shared office space in the Aga Khan Centre, access to computer facilities, and access to the Aga Khan Library and the libraries of neighbouring academic institutions.

RESPONSABILITIES

The work that the research project undertakes is innovative, interdisciplinary, and comparative. Fellows will work closely with Computer Scientists and are expected to be open to Digital Humanities approaches and actively participate in developing both the project’s corpus and its methods. They will consider intertextuality and the reuse of texts between regions and across time or genres. Specifically, the fellows will:

1. Undertake research on a project of their design that addresses the core intellectual questions of the project focused on Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt or the Islamic West from the 8th century onwards.

2. Contribute to the development of KITAB’s corpus (see http://iti-corpus.github.io/ and https://github.com/OpenITI). Nota Bene: Each fellow will be trained to use this corpus and also responsible for annotating 150 works within it pertaining to his/her research.

3. Take the lead on the annotation and analysis of the KITAB’s corpus in their field/strand (Iraq and the Arabic Peninsula, Egypt, or the Islamic West).

4. Provide feedback on data generated by the technical team they will work closely with.

5. Publish articles and a monograph using KITAB’s corpus and text reuse data.

The core intellectual questions of the research project pertain to:

a. Authorial practices: the meaning of authorship, the cultural meanings associated with different forms of transmission, and ideas about originality.

b. Changing forms of the book: ideas of the Arabic book, including the ways in which textual fragments in books took on lives of their own within anthologies, encyclopaedias, multi-text compilations (majmūʿāt), commentaries, abridgements (mukhtaṣar) and extensions of books.

c. Narrative adaptations: how frequently copied texts and parts of texts were adapted over time. For example, the people, places, and events of the past that have a capacity for metamorphosis and recycling of meaning.

REQUIREMENTS

We expect the three fellows to be based in, or willing to move to, London and to work at the Aga Khan Centre with the PI and the Research Associate.

The candidates will have completed their PhD in a field such as Middle Eastern History, Arabic Literature or Arabic Studies by December 2018. Their dissertations should show interest in, e.g., intertextuality, text reuse or history of the Arabic book. The candidates must demonstrate fluency in reading and understanding classical Arabic. Interests shown in Digital Humanities and Open Data will be much appreciated. Ability and desire to work collaboratively is essential to the position.

APPLICATION

​Application pack should include CV (maximum 5 pages) with a list of publications, 3 Referee contacts, 1 Sample Publication, Research Interest Statement (1 page), Project Proposal (3 pages) with relevant Bibliography (an interest in working on KITAB’s corpus will be much appreciated). Complete application should be submitted by midday on the 12th of October 2018 to ismc.personnel@aku.edu 

Candidates can expect to hear back from us in the last week of October 2018 and first Interviews will be held in November. 

Decisions on applications will be made and communicated in December 2018 for the start date of 1st March 2019. 

Please direct any questions to ismc.personnel@aku.edu 

Note: Due to the large number of applications expected, we will only contact candidates short-listed for interview. If you have not heard from us within four weeks after the closing date, please presume that your application has been unsuccessful. 

By submitting an application, you provide your consent to the Institute to share the contents of your application with relevant colleagues at other locations of the University for the purpose of completing this recruitment exercise.

Applications should be submitted latest by October 12, 2018