We are currently hiring for 2 postdoctoral positions.
Postdoctoral Positions
The project has two postdoctoral positions available, each for 30 months.
The postdocs will be key contributors to our program of research into the Social Credit System in China, carrying out independent research and working closely with the project team. This research is expected to advance anthropological studies of state digitalization projects worldwide, develop a culturally specific understanding of the notion of digitalized trust, and renew the literature on internal migration in China. The postdoctoral research projects will constitute a significant component of the overall project, and while the overall emphases of the research are determined by the project, the postdocs will have considerable freedom through the subprojects in shaping how the research objectives are realized. In addition to conducting fieldwork, the postdocs are expected to contribute to the shared project, publish independently, as well as together with other project team members, present research papers at international workshops and conferences, contribute to popular dissemination of the research results, and contribute to project organization and administration through workshop and conference coordination.
At the IT University of Copenhagen, the postdoc will join the active Technologies in Practice research group, one of Scandinavia’s largest interdisciplinary STS environments looking at the intersection of society and IT. They will be responsible for designing an ethnographic study that attends to the making of the SCS as a sociotechnical phenomenon, following technologies, their makers, environments and consequences of use for populations on the move. The successful candidate will be interested in and aware of questions of trust and trustworthiness become turned into technological questions, and the social life of SCS technologies in use.
At Aalborg University, the postdoc will join the interdisciplinary research cluster Global Politics and Diversity at the Department of Politics and Society. The post doc will be responsible for designing an ethnographic study focusing on how China’s mobile population (migrants, tourists, students etc.) are affected by and themselves affect the creation and implementation of the SCS. The successful candidate will have an interest in or experience with working with issues such as mobility and migration, digital governance or trust and diversity in a Chinese context.
- See the full requirements and apply for the ITU Postdoc here
- For further information on the ITU position please contact Rachel Douglas-Jones.
- See the full requirements and apply for the Aalborg University Postdoc here
- For further information on the Aalborg University Postdoc please contact Jesper Zeuthen
The deadline for applications is August 1st, 2021.
Earlier Advertisements
In addition, the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg University, in collaboration with the Sino-Danish Centre, Beijing, is offering a three year fully funded PhD scholarship to start on September 1, 2021 or as soon as possible thereafter. Moving Data-Moving People Co-Investigator Jesper Willaing Zeuthen will be the primary supervisor of this project.
Position Description
China is reforming its household registration system controlling access to its cities and to public welfare. While access to larger cities, such as Beijing, is getting harder and subject to increasingly sophisticated point systems, access to smaller cities is getting easier with the government encouraging migration to a number of cities within Beijing’s urban cluster (the Bohai cluster). The successful candidate will be working on how household registration reforms are unfolded in Beijing and smaller cities within the Bohai cluster and how they affect the ways in which access to welfare and other privileges usually regulated through the household registration system are distributed. The project will thereby contribute to understanding the kind of stratification created within China’s urban clusters as well as to elucidating the opportunities provided for rural-urban migrants wishing to settle down.
The PhD project will be embedded in:
1) Research Centre for Development and International Relations (AAU), which has general expertise in China studies (supervisor, Associate Professor Jesper Willaing Zeuthen)
2) Centre for Comparative Welfare Studies (AAU), which has general expertise in mobility and social rights (co-supervisor Professor Christian Albrekt Larsen)
3) Rural Development research team at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) at the Chinese Acdemy of Sciences , which has general expertise in rural-urban mobility within China (co-supervisor, Professor Zhang Linxiu).
At the Research Centre for Development and International Relations, the successful candidate will be working in collaboration with the Moving Data – Moving People research team working on mapping how China’s social credit system affects the governance of China’s mobile population. As part of the research project, the successful candidate will be based for at least 12 months at the Sino-Danish Centre in Beijing.
- Hold a relevant master’s degree in China studies, political science, geography, ethnography or similar at the starting date.
- Command Chinese and English at native or near-native level
- Be able to start in the position no later than November 1, 2021.
In addition, it will be advantage if the candidate has:
- Training in relevant disciplines (political science, development studies, geography, ethnography or similar)
- Experiences from living and/or conducting fieldwork in China
- Experience with digital data collection
- Experience with creating networks in China
We wish to reflect the diversity of society and welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of personal background. However, as a result of the institutional setup of the Sino-Danish Centre, Chinese citizens including citizens from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are not eligible for the position.