Fellowships for Senior Researchers

The Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences „Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“ is a research unit at Leipzig University, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). We are looking for Senior Research Fellows now onwards.

Since 2016, we have been investigating forms of conceptual distinction and arrangements of social differentiation between religious and other social spheres, practices, interpretive frameworks, institutions and discourses. To such arrangements, which are often contentious, we refer with the heuristic term ‘secularities’. Based on the hypothesis that drawing boundaries between the religious and the non-religious is neither an exclusive sign of modernity nor the ‘West’, we have already explored corresponding emic taxonomies, forms of institutional differentiation and modes of demarcation in different eras and areas especially in the Islamicate World and several regions in Central, East, South and Southeast Asia. In the second funding phase, having started in spring 2020, we are regionally focussing on the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Israel. Thus, also the fellows’ projects shall deal with one of these regions. Systematically, we especially want to shed light on the following aspects:

1. path dependencies and probabilities, global entanglements, cultural encounters and processes of cultural transfer and translation
2. processes of both religionisation and secularisation as well as of culturalisation and heritagisation
3. the heterogeneity of ‘Western’ secularities
4. the development and use of symbolic binaries and the relation between epistemic and social structures
5. materiality of the religious and the secular and markers of secularity.

As a research group, the KFG intends to provide a stimulating academic environment in which innovative research topics can be dealt with through discussion and debate within a small group of researchers. Since the research group can only be effective with its fellows’ attendance and contribution, we expect fellows to be present regularly at the KFG, to be prepared for meetings, to make active contributions to discussions and to contribute to the KFG’s Working Paper Series as well as to its Companion to the Study of Secularity. The research group and its fellows organise regular workshops, in which fellows also take active roles depending on their research focus.

Fellowships will be awarded for periods between 6 and 12 months, in exceptional cases shorter stays (at least 2 months) will be possible as well. The scholarship amount depends on the scholar’s status:

Experienced Researchers

• scholars holding a postdoctoral qualification (Habilitation) or working at least at the level of Assistant Professor or Junior Research Group Leader or having a record of several years of independent academic work
• €3170 scholarship a month OR reduced fellowship of €750 per month and coverage of costs for the substitute of scholars, who are on paid leave from their home institution (€8.925 per month at maximum)
• actual accommodation costs (up to the respective rate at the university’s guest house)
• Researchers with German nationality will obligatory be employed, if they have no other employment subject to social insurance contributions. Accomodation costs cannot be reimbursed in this case.
• actual travel costs to and from Leipzig
• travel costs for trips, that are related to the research within the KFG
• additional allowances for the compatibility of family and career

PostDoctoral Researchers

• €1750 scholarship and €250 subsidy for material costs a month OR alternatively: reduced fellowship of €750 per month and coverage of costs for the substitute of scholars, who are on paid leave from their home institution (€6.175 per month at maximum) for foreign researchers
• actual accommodation costs (up to the respective rate at the university’s guest house)
• Researchers with German nationality will obligatory be employed (level TV-L E 13), if they have no other employment subject to social insurance contributions. Accomodation costs cannot be reimbursed in this case.
• actual travel costs to and from Leipzig
• travel costs for trips, that are related to the research within the KFG

Applications are possible at any time and should include a CV, research proposal (2000 words max.) publication list, work sample (one published article or chapter), a letter of intent as well as information on the preferred time slot of the fellowship. Please send your application as one pdf-file to:

Marie-Luise Frank
Administrative Coordinator
multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de

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