Humboldt Research Fellowships (& Postdocs) 2026 (Germany)

FellowshipsHumboldt Research Fellowships, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. Deadline: Selection committee meets March, July, and November each year, and you should apply well in advance. Applications are usually processed within four to eight months.

The Humboldt Research Fellowship is available to researchers of all nationalities and research areas, at either the postdoctoral or experienced researcher level, to conduct research in Germany. Through the Humboldt Research Fellowship, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation sponsors researchers with above-average qualifications from across the globe. The fellowship enables you to conduct your own research at various stages of your career in collaboration with a host at a German research institution of your choice. Hosts may apply for a subsidy towards research costs. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation aims to achieve a good balance between genders and a high level of diversity among its fellows in all areas. They therefore expressly invite female scientists and members of underrepresented groups to apply. They welcome all applications, regardless of ethnic, cultural or social background, gender identity, age, religion, worldview, disability or sexual orientation.

Postdocs

Benefit from research sponsorship in Germany at the beginning of your academic career. The Humboldt Research Fellowship for postdocs enables you to conduct research in Germany. The monthly fellowship amount is €3,000 plus addtional benefits. Fellowships may last from 6 to 24 months and can be divided into up to three stays within three years.

Experienced researchers

You can still apply for research sponsorship in Germany even if you are already well advanced in your academic career. The Humboldt Research Fellowship for experienced researchers enables you to conduct research in Germany. The fellowship amount is €3,170. Fellowships may last from 6 to 18 months and can be divided into up to three stays within three years.

U Copenhagen: Postdoctoral Researcher in International Migration Studies (Denmark)

Postdocs
Postdoctoral researcher in International Migration Studies, Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.  Deadline: 7 September 2025.

The Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invite applications for a postdoctoral position in international migration studies from 1 January 2026. The position is a fixed-term position for 24 months.

The postdoc will be based on the Institute’s innterdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (AMIS). They seek a strong candidate with a dynamic profile in the broad, international field of migration studies, who can document an impressive track record of humanities and/or social science research on matters relating to the topics in the REGENERATION research project below.

The postdoctoral position is part of the research project REGENERATION, financed by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, studying the changes in gender norms and practices women Ukrainian without male fen in Denmark after the Russian among 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Investigating the growing phenomenon of “feminized displacement” to the EU, this project focuses on gender by following women’s re-settlement in Denmark, studying how they re-established everyday structures, create, and elseient toward the future through relations with kin (family and acquaintances) and through encountering Danish institutions’ locally and Ukrainian institutions transnationally. The project aims to develop a novel analytical framework to understand processes of “re-degeneration,” concepts on the re-making of life after war, relatedness with kin, institutions and the state, and intersectionality.

The postdoc project focus on women with children and qualitative applies, visual and ethnographic methods in studying their everyday life, local and transnational relations and encounters with the Danish welfare state (Work-package 2).

In two other sub-studies of the larger research project, the focus is on gender norms and practices Ukrainian women without conferred children and welfare state actors, working with women Ukrainian.

Royal Roads U: Postdoc Possibilities (Canada)

Postdocs

Multiple postdoc opportunities, Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada. Deadline: 3 July 2025.

Royal Roads University (RRU) invites expressions of interest from those wishing to develop a Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) application. CPRA award amounts of $70,000 (taxable income) per year for 2 years (non-renewable) are used to fund a postdoctoral researcher position at the university and are subject to MERCs (mandatory employment related costs). RRU seeks expressions of interest specific to a series of research topics; that most likely relevant to followers of this Center is this one:

Dr. Juana Du is seeking a postdoctoral scholar to support her research interests which include the impact of cultural awareness and assumptions on intercultural experiences; communication and intercultural adjustment of sojourners, particularly around international students and business expatriates; organizational culture, learning and knowledge sharing in multinational and multilingual organizations in different cultural and institutional contexts. Her recent research projects examine organizational identification in global virtual teams and boundary conditions, with an emphasis on the role of emerging technology, and AI literacy at the hybrid workplace.

U Hamburg: 3 Postdocs in Linguistic Diversity & Social Participation Across the Lifespan (Germany)

Postdocs

3 Postdoctoral Research Associates for the project Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation Across the Lifespan, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. Deadline: 15 June 2025.

The Faculty of Education at the University of Hamburg is a leader in conducting innovative and future-oriented research related to the educational and social consequences of diversity resulting from migration and globalization. This strength is now further expanded through the award of a Humboldt Professorship to Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller as part of the faculty research center “Literacy in Diversity Settings (LiDS).”

The Humboldt Professorship is devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan” and is closely integrated with the activities of the Language on the Move platform. The research focus will be on migrant language socialization, language learning, and settlement across the lifespan and outside of institutions of formal education. This includes digital spaces as well as language brokering and other forms of informal language assistance that often undergird institutional communications in linguistically diverse societies.

Your responsibilities: Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications. This is a unique opportunity to become part of an education-focused research center that aims to make major contributions to social cohesion in linguistically diverse societies.

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.

U College Dublin: Postdoc with Generation Peace (Ireland)

Postdocs

Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Generation Peace, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. Deadline: 11 July 2025.

Applications are invited for a temporary post of a UCD Post-doctoral Research Fellow Level 1 within UCD School of Psychology, temporary from 1st Sep 2025 to 31st Aug 2026.

GENERATION PEACE does not ask how to protect 1.8 billion children in conflict-affected countries. Instead, it shows how youth – one-third of the world’s population – can build peace. This approach challenges the portrayal of youth as perpetrators (i.e. number of child soldiers) and positions youth as a driver of quality peace, rather than an outcome (e.g. primary school enrolment). Addressing the gaps in the existing research necessitates a holistic, multilevel model tested with diverse methods across contexts and time.

More specifically, this role will advance Work Package 2 (WP2) of GENERATION PEACE, quantitatively examining the cross-national impact of youth peacebuilding on quality peace. WP2 will produce a Youth Peacebuilding Indicator (YPI), compatible with cross-national databases from 1946-2020 for 193 UN member states, operationalised across two domains: (1) capacities for nonviolent conflict transformation and (2) foundations for sustainable peace and development. The YPI will integrate (a) existing data on youth; (b) recode or ‘slice’ existing data to focus on youth; and (c) create additional variables within each domain. Supervised coding and Expert Review will ensure data compatibility and quality. Critical to identifying potential threats to endogeneity, multilevel analyses will be complemented by an instrumental variable test and sensitivity analyses to selection and bias. The relative degree of confidence in the YPI codes will also be modelled.

U Strathclyde: Role of 3rd Sector Organizations in Supporting Asylum Seekers and Refugees (UK)

Postdocs

Postdoctoral Researcher: Role of Third Sector Organizations in Supporting Asylum Seekers’ and Refugees’ Integration, Citizenship, and Belonging, University of Strathclyde, UK. Deadline: 9 May 2025.

The role of charities and community groups has become more prominent over the last decade of austerity and ongoing cost-of-living crisis, including in relation to support for asylum seekers and refugees. The aim of the study is to address this gap and provide evidence on the role of third sector organisations in supporting refugee integration and individuals who are navigating the UK asylum system.  This opportunity is for 3 years.

Boston College: Postdoc/Visiting Assistant Professor in Justice & the Common Good (USA)

Postdocs

Postdoc / Core Fellow / Visiting Assistant Professor in Justice and the Common Good, Boston College, Boston, MA, USA. Deadline: 10 March 2025.

The Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College invites applications for the position of Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Justice and the Common Good with a focus on Migration, Diaspora Studies, Ethnic Studies, Peace and Justice, and/or Digital Humanities. The appointment for this one-year postdoctoral visiting assistant professorship will be for the 2025-2026 academic year. Salary is competitive, and the position is renewable upon favorable review for up to three years.

Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university that strives to integrate research excellence with a foundational commitment to formative liberal arts education. Boston College requires all students to complete a liberal arts University Core Curriculum with 15 requirements as the foundation of their undergraduate education. Core Fellows teach signature courses in the Core including interdisciplinary Complex Problem and Enduring Question courses developed for first-year students which are part of an ongoing renewal of the University Core Curriculum. Core Fellows participate in the Core Fellows Program, which is designed to help newly-minted Ph.D. holders in their scholarly pursuits as well as in becoming outstanding instructors through pedagogical training focused on the education of the whole person.

During one semester of the 2025-2026 academic year, the Core Fellow will join a teaching team for a course with lecture, lab, and reflection session components. The Core Fellow will be primarily responsible for hands-on, project-based lab sections associated with the Complex Problem course, “Moving Matters: Migration and Transformation Across the Americas,” co-taught by faculty from the School of Social Work and the History Department. In the other semester, the Core Fellow will teach an Enduring Question course paired with a course designed by another scholar in the liberal arts. There may also be opportunities to teach electives in their field.

Northeastern U: Postdoc at Center for Transformative Media (USA)

Postdocs

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Transformative Media, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. Deadline: Open until filled; posted 6 January 2025.

The Center for Communication, Media Innovation and Social Change within the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University invites applications for a fully funded Postdoctoral Research Associate. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to engage in a series of research projects at the intersection of networked urban mobilities and mobile communication, with a particular focus on understanding how marginalized communities creatively appropriate media technologies.

Projects include:

  • Mobile Networked Creativity: An investigation of how marginalized communities around the world creatively engage with networked technologies. The project includes mapping/visualizing how these creative practices occur around the Globe.
  • Retro Mobile Gaming Database: A mobile gaming database of historic mobile games and artifacts to aid researchers in games studies.
    Retro Mobile Gaming Collection: Producing a media art show on the history of mobile communication and mobile games, and contributing to the growth of the retro mobile gaming collection housed in the Center.
  • Micromobilities Justice: Analyzing networked urban mobilities in Global South urban spaces as they relate to mobility justice and social inclusion.

This is a full time position for one year, with potential for renewal based on performance and funding availability.

Birkbeck, U of London: Postdoc on Impact of Immigration on Brazilian Society (UK)

Postdocs

Postdoctoral Researcher on the Impact of Immigration on Brazilian Society, Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Deadline: 2 February 2025.

Birkbeck, University of London, is seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher to join an international and interdisciplinary team working on a project looking at the transformative impact of immigration on Brazilian society. Funded by the British Academy, the research project ‘Globalisation from below: livelihoods, trade and transnationalism in Brazil’s informal economy’, is a collaboration between Birkbeck and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte, Brazil). The project focuses on the informal economy in Belo Horizonte with an emphasis on the role of Chinese immigrants and the everyday cross-cultural and economic practices that produce globalisation from below.

Through three key strands, the research explores:

  • Economic interactions and conflicts between Chinese migrants, Brazilian workers and local street vendors
  • Emerging social relations and forms of belonging, and
  • Socio-cultural and economic transformations in urban spaces

Plus, a collaborative methodology will engage participants in an artistic-cultural process creating spaces for dialogue and cooperation.

The project will produce an exhibition and a Transnational Informal Economy Atlas revealing the ways in which globalisation from below connects and transforms urban livelihoods, spaces and societies with a focus on Brazil-China relations.