Competition for the adjunct – postdoctoral trainee position (post-doc) – the contractor within the NCN OPUS research project

INSTITUTION: Institute of History Tadeusz Manteuffel of the Polish Academy of Sciences

CITY: Warsaw

POSITION: adjunct – postdoctoral trainee position (post-doc) – the contractor within the research project

SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE: history

ANNOUNCEMENT DATE: 17 December 2024

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF APPLICATIONS: 19 January 2025

DATE OF THE COMPETITION: until 27 January 2025

LINK TO THE WEBSITE: http://www.ihpan.edu.pl

KEYWORDS: community town and city, nineteenth century, German partition

Institute of History Tadeusz Manteuffel of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw announces a competition for the position of adjunct – postdoctoral trainee (post-doc) – contractor of the research project entitled “Urban communities in East-Central Europe (ca. 1850–1914)”, commissioned by the National Science Center under the OPUS scheme (project no. 2024/53/B/HS3/03990) under the supervision of dr hab. Aleksander Łupienko.

Competition will be held according to: REGULATIONS ON AWARDING FUNDING FOR RESEARCH TASKS FUNDED BY THE NATIONAL SCIENCE CENTRE AS REGARDS RESEARCH PROJECTS, Annex to NCN Council Resolution No 23/2023 of 16 February 2023.

Remuneration may be planned within the funds for the research project provided that all of the following conditions are met by the person to be employed at that position:

1. they are selected by means of open competition procedure, carried out by a recruitment committee appointed by the head of the project’s host entity, composed of the project’s principal investigator as its chair and at least two other persons appointed by the principal investigator, who have necessary scientific or professional qualifications. The assessment of the candidates is carried out pursuant to the criteria outlined in the call announcement, subject to an obligatory eligibility criterion according to which a PhD degree must be conferred in the year of employment in the project or within 7 years before 1 January of the year of employment in the project18. This period may be extended by a time of long-term (in excess of 90 days) documented sick leaves or physiotherapy leaves granted on account of being unfit to work. In addition, the period may be extended by the number of months of a childcare leave granted pursuant to the Labour Code and in the case of women, by 18 months for every child born or adopted, whichever manner of accounting for career breaks is preferable. The above-mentioned period must not be shortened or extended any longer by the call organisers. The call results are posted on the website of the host institution for the project;
2. they did not have the principal investigator as their research supervisor or auxiliary supervisor of their PhD dissertation;
3. their PhD degree has been awarded by another institution than the one planned to employ them at this post or they have completed a continuous and evidenced post-doctoral fellowship of at least 10 months in another institution than the host institution for the project and in another country than the one in which they have been conferred a PhD degree;
4. they will be employed for a period of at least 6 months;
5. at the time of receiving remuneration, they will not be receiving any other remuneration paid from the funds granted to research projects under NCN calls under the heading of direct costs;
6. in the period of receiving the remuneration they will be receiving no remuneration from another employer pursuant to an employment contract, including an employer with registered office outside of Poland.[1]

 

Abstract of the research project:  The project is aimed at analysing urban society in all the three partitions of the Polish lands during the nineteenth century, between the ‘Spring of Nations’ and the outbreak of the World War One (1848–1914). It will look at the inner workings of the urban communities, into which the society was then divided. These communities included the ethnic, estate-based, religious and confessional, professional and class-related, local and neighbourhood groups, as well as more modern voluntary associations, established during this period. It will argue that the allegedly premodern community is a category that should be employed more widely not only on the studies of the Middle Ages and Early Modern times, but also the industrial society of the nineteenth century. The towns and cities to be researched will include larger and smaller urban centres: Warsaw and Łódź in the Russian, Lviv and Kolomiya in the Austrian, and Poznań and Toruń in the German partition.

The research will delve into the inner workings of these communities, the activity and narrations produced by their leaders (the official ones and those who acted only incidentally as the groups’ leaders), places deemed as important for these groupings (historical sites, commemorative places, monuments, or simply houses or specific parts of the cities), and lastly to the visions of the shared past that were produced and that were often unidentical with the visions showcased in more mainstream and celebrated books or commemoration practices. The communities in question were – as the hypothesis goes – overlapping, non-hierarchical, and had in fact more loose boundaries than the groups’ leaders were ready to admit. One of the important questions to be answered will be the real character of urban society: a coherent whole or more an aggregate of groups? The aim of the project is also to look at the strategies employed by urban activists, the character of each community, its permeation by members of other communities and its influence on the local politics. It will be possible by investigating, among others, local and confessional press, official community reports, memoires, personal acts in archives, as well as sources showing the ‘outer gaze’ on these groups: official government data and reports.

The research will rehabilitate the local and the particular in the urban history of the Polish lands, something that is often lacking in the major works on the theme. By doing that it will to some extent make it more comprehensible, ‘tamed’, and more ready to be reconciled with the higher-scale national historical discourse. And, last but not least, the resulting manuscript of a book will have the potential to show new ways of practicing urban history, not only in Poland.

 

The tasks of the trainee will include:

• search and analysis of archival and press material sources about the urban communities of Poznań and Toruń,
• writing and publishing articles in peer-review journals,
• presenting papers at international conferences,
• participation in team meetings,
• participation in public engagement activities,
• supporting the PI in project management tasks.

Eligibility requirements. The candidate should:

• hold a doctoral degree in humanities or social sciences, a maximum of 7 years after PhD,
• have a scholarly background in history,
• demonstrate an interest in the history of cities under the German partition, especially Poznań – in the discussed period (approx. 1850–1914), with particular emphasis on urban communities and urban public discourse,
• have a very good knowledge of Polish, English and German,
• have a track record of relevant publications and conference presentations in the areas mentioned above, declare consent to be included in the number of employees conducting research during the employment period, i.e. in the number N for the algorithm for allocating the base subsidy to statutory activity.

Employment: from 03/03/2025 for 3 years, full-time. Yearly gross salary 140.000 PLN.

Detailed terms of employment (in line with the recommendations of the National Science Center) will be specified in the employment contract for a fix-term contract, concluded between the adjunct-trainee and the Director of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

Candidates are requested to submit the following documents:

• Application for employment addressed to the director of the Institute[2],
• Curriculum Vitae with a list of publications, name, email and telephone number of at least two referees (no recommendation letters),
• A letter of motivation (max. 2 pages),
• A copy of the doctoral diploma,
• Sample of one English or German language publication,
• Candidate’s declaration that in the event of winning the competition, IH PAN will be the primary place of work,
• Consent to be included in the number of employees conducting research activity during the employment period, i.e. the number N for the purposes of the algorithm for allocating the base subsidy for statutory activity (link to the form https://ihpan.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Oswiadczenie_wskazanie_do_wniosku_od-2018.pdf).

 Scans of the documents as a single PDF document should be sent to:  ihpan@ihpan.edu.pl; the successful candidate will be required to provide original documents.

Selected candidates will be invited for an interview (in Polish).

Director of Institute of History PAS
Professor Maciej Janowski

Warsaw, 17 December 2024

 

[1] Details of the competition: REGULATIONS ON AWARDING FUNDING FOR RESEARCH TASKS FUNDED BY THE NATIONAL SCIENCE CENTRE AS REGARDS RESEARCH PROJECTS, Annex to NCN Council Resolution No 23/2023 of 16 February 2023.

[2] The personal data provided by the applicant will be processed by the data manager, i.e. the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, located in Warsaw, Rynek Starego Miasta 31, for the purposes of the recruitment procedure (selection process). The transfer of data is voluntary, but necessary for the recruitment procedure. The data will be processed for as long as it is necessary for the recruitment procedure, including archiving. The data may be disclosed to companies providing technical and IT services to the Data Controller.

The data subject has the right to access, rectify, erase or restrict the processing of personal data, as well as the right to data portability and the right to lodge a complaint with the President of the Office for Personal Data Protection.

For all matters related to the processing of personal data, please contact the Data Protection Officer: iodo@ihpan.edu.pl. For detailed information, please visit: https://ihpan.edu.pl/en/about-us/personal-data-protection/