Job advert: Asymmetrical Encounters: Digital Humanities Approaches to Reference Cultures in Europe,

The School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS), in collaboration with the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, invites applicants for a research associate position on the “Asymmetrical Encounters: Digital Humanities Approaches to Reference Cultures in Europe, 1815–1992” project, funded as part of the HERA Joint Research Programme ‘Cultural Encounters’ (2013–16). The postholder will work as part of an international team based at UCL and the Universities of Utrecht (the Netherlands) and Trier (Germany). The post is available for three years, 2013-2016. The successful candidate will be responsible for the sub-project ‘Metropolitan Encounters: References to European Cities and Metropolitan Centres in Public Debates about Modernization, Diversity, and Identity’. This project analyses the ways in which metropolitan issues were discussed in 19th and 20th century European public debates. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, large urban centres such as London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels served as symbols of both modernization and national identity, offering different solutions to challenges of urbanization and demographical concentration. The Metropolis captured the European imagination as both utopian dream and dystopian nightmare, and developed into an enduring theme in literature, the arts, photography, and movies. The aim of this project is to use digital humanities tools to investigate references to these European metropolitan centres in collections of digitized newspapers in various European collections. Expert knowledge of European Cultural history is essential, as well as having native or near-native competence in English, and good reading knowledge of German, Dutch and/or French. A PhD in History or a related subject (or equivalent experience) is essential to this role, with affinity to digital tools in the Humanities being an additional advantage. To view the job description and for details on how to apply, please see the attached full job advert. The closing date is 29 August 2013.