Tag: Conflict Studies

King’s College London: Postdoc in Relational Harm – Conflict Studies (UK)

Postdocs

Postdoctoral Research Associate: Relational Harm – Conflict Studies, Social Science and Public Policy, King’s College London, UK. Deadline: 11 July 2025.

King’s College London welcomes applications for a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) in Conflict Studies to work on the project Relational Harm: Targeting the Family in War and Oppression. The PI is Dr Rebekka Friedman, and the project is an ERC-funded Consolidator Grant. The PDRA position is for a 30-month duration starting in January 2026 and will be based in the Department of War Studies.

The PDRA in conflict studies will contribute to the project’s conceptual pillars and to its field research. The PDRA in Conflict Studies will have qualitative and quantitative skills. The PDRA in Conflict Studies will work on mapping relational harm. This will involve looking at when and where family separation occurs in war and counterinsurgency and when youth are targeted or removed from their families and communities. This will include examining existing databases on violence and conflict.

Each PDRA will also oversee and conduct field research in one of the project’s contemporary case studies. PDRAs will use qualitative methods to conduct fieldwork, and to analyse and write up research outputs.

The project examines ‘relational harm’, defined in the project as harm that individuals and communities experience through the targeting and control of their intimate relationships. The project will focus on the forced separation of families as a significant form of relational harm, particularly in the context of state enforced disappearances. It will examine the impact of forced separation on families and communities and will assess why states carry out forced separation during war and counterinsurgency. The project will focus on lived experiences and the wider ongoing political, social, economic, and psychological legacies of relational harm and ambiguous loss. It will look at gendered and intergenerational dimensions and will examine family and family life as fundamental to the waging and experience of war.

The project is interdisciplinary and will utilize mixed methods. The project will have three contemporary case studies: Sri Lanka, Peru, and the Rohingya community (in Bangladesh). The project will also involve archival research into family separation and reunification in the World War Two period.

University of Amsterdam job ad (The Netherlands)

The “>Department of Political Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is currently seeking an Assistant professor in International Relations, with a focus on Security and/or Conflict.

Job description
The successful candidate has to be able to teach introductory courses in International Relations and a broad range of advanced courses in the field of security or conflict studies, at graduate and undergraduate levels. Special attention is given to contemporary questions around security and conflict, for example new security problems (including but not limited to: non-state violence, human rights, energy and resource scarcities, private security), or the politics of (violent) conflict and civil wars. She or he should bring to students in international relations (and students in political science more broadly) insights from contemporary debates on security and conflict.

In terms of research, the successful candidate should contribute to the existing research agendas of the  AISSR Research Group ‘Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance’. We expect the successful candidate to engage in conceptual innovation and contribute to cutting-edge debates in conflict studies and/or (critical) security studies. We expect the candidate to be capable of engaging in methodologically pluralist debates. Central in the group’s program is the examination of notions of identities, categorizations and boundaries as defined by classical political science concepts through analyses of contemporary policy practices and their changing institutional contexts, with a keen eye to the (implicit) politics involved.

Tasks
• Developing, conducting, and supervising high quality academic research in the field of security/conflict;
• teaching general courses in International Relations and specialist courses in security/conflict at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels, and involvement in post-graduate supervision;
• a dynamic contribution to the research profile of the AISSR research group ‘Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance,’ and to the development of the field through scholarly publications and participation in national and international research networks;
• (participation in) acquisition of external research funding;
• contributing to administrative tasks in the Department.

Requirements
Candidates should have:
• a PhD degree and a background in international relations, political science, or a related field;
• an ongoing programme of research and publications, focused on international, peer-reviewed journals and/or books published by internationally recognized academic presses;
• a demonstrated interest in security and/or conflict studies, and a broad general knowledge in International Relations;
• ability to provide excellent and inspiring teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels;
• a capacity to teach core courses within the International Relations curriculum;
• a capacity to teach in English or Dutch, and a willingness to learn Dutch within two years;
• the basic qualification at Dutch universities in higher education (Basiskwalificatie Onderwijs; BKO) certificate, or a willingness to acquire such within two years.

Further information
Further enquiries may be directed to:
Prof. Marieke de Goede, Co-Director of the AISSR Research Group Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance

Appointment
Based on a full-time appointment (38 hours per week) the gross monthly salary will range from €3,259 to €5,070 (scale 11 or 12) depending on experience. The salary will be increased by 8 % holiday allowance and 8,3 % annual bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement (CAO) for Dutch Universities is applicable. The appointment will be temporary for three years, with the prospect of a permanent appointment if the conditions for tenure are realized.

Job application
Applications should comprise a letter of motivation, a full CV including a list of publications. These should be sent in one document as a pdf-file to  sollicitaties-fmg@uva.nl with vacancy number 15-235 as subject. Please do not send us additional documentation at this stage. The deadline for applications is Monday 7 September 2015.

Apply now

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is a university with an internationally acclaimed profile, located at the heart of the Dutch capital. As well as a world centre for business and research, Amsterdam is a hub of cultural and media activities. The University of Amsterdam is a member of the League of European Research Universities.

The Department of Political Science is one of the departments of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG). The College of Social Sciences (CSW) and the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS) are responsible for the undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in Political Science. The research within the Department is conducted in research programmes of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). The AISSR unites the social science research of the UvA, and is one of the largest research institutes in Europe.