Postcolonial Studies Initiative

12/10/2026

For the first Graduate Gender Programme Lecture in collaboration with NOG, we are joined by Shakshi Singh on Friday October 16, 2026, 15:15h-17:00h, (Utrecht University, Drift 25, Room 102). The lecture is entitled 'Translating Space: Women, Movement, and the Politics of Place.' See here for more information:

For the first Graduate Gender Programme Lecture in collaboration with NOG, we are joined by Shakshi Singh on Friday October 16, 2026, 15:15h-17:00h, (Drift 25, Room 102). The lecture is entitled Translating Space: Women, Movement, and the Politics of Place. Details: Graduate Gender Programme Lecture...

07/10/2026

📢 Call for Papers | International Conference 2027

'Immersive Media in /of Crisis' - 24-26th of May 2027 - Utrecht University, Netherlands

Convened by Professor Sandra Ponzanesi, Dr. Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang, Laurence Herfs, Lisa Burghardt, and Dr. Wouter Oomen

The conference will bring together interdisciplinary scholars to explore the various intersections between immersive media and crisis, ten years after the much-heralded framing of Virtual Reality (VR) as the “Ultimate Empathy Machine.” We invite contributions that thematize the notion of crisis across multiple valences—from delineating the imaginaries of immersive media as the ultimate apparatus for bringing “crisis” up close, to critiquing the spectacularizing temporality of crisis shown in immersive media, to analyzing the emerging discourse of immersive media as itself a technology in crisis (financial, symbolic, distribution-wise, or political). We are especially eager for presentations that engage with post- or decolonial critique, q***r theory, critical race theory, environmental studies, or feminist theory to analyze immersive art or media that destabilize hegemonic mediations of crises—for example, by staying with the trouble of slow violence in the wake of colonialism.

We seek to:

- Interrogate immersive media beyond the empathy machine: If we don’t want the “empathy machine” of humanitarian organizations married to the tech industry to be the dominant mediator of crisis, then what do we want immersive media to (un)do?

- Think about the notion of crisis: What are the crises addressed through immersive media? Humanitarian crises, war and conflict, sustainability and climate crises, health and pandemic crises? Natural disasters and nuclear threats? How are these crises framed and mediated?

- Question the role of the human: What is the role of the Human in these new technological constellations? Virtual reality promises the collapse of time and space and the embrace of «the Other.» How do immersive technologies rethink the role of the human and of common humanity in conditions of crisis?

Read the full call for papers here:

https://vrmigration.sites.uu.nl/news-and-events/

📩 We welcome contributions by January 15th, 2027 to [email protected]

01/10/2026

The PCI Autumn Newsletter is here! Read the full issue here and subscribe to the next one through the link at the bottom:

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new IOS (Institutions for Open Societies) community: GEM – Gender, Migration and Social Justice. We will kick off this new initiative on October 13 with a discussion of the report Dismantling Discrimination. The yearly GEM Annual Lecture will open with ...

26/09/2026

As part of the AISCLI WEBINAR SERIES 2026, join in on the 28th of September 5:30 p.m. (CET) to see Nicoletta Vallorani (Milano), Simona Bertacco (Louisville), William Boelhower (Venezia) in dialogue with Roberta Cimarosti (University of Calabria) on their new book Anglophone Literature and Migration. Find the teams link here:

04/09/2026

We want to draw your attention to the event: 'Repair: Learning Cultural Justice from the ABC Islands' at Pakhuis de Zwijger on September 22nd. The partners will present their projects and discuss the reparative initiatives they have recently developed, followed by a public space for discussion that will bring together practitioners, researchers, policymakers, activistsand advocacies from the Caribbean and continental Netherlands. To conclude, there will drinks and the showing of documentaries and films from the Caribbean. Find the full day and evening program here: https://dutchcaribbeanculturaljustice.my.canva.site/programme

25/08/2026

PhD Position in Literary Studies / Translation Studies: Writer’s Residencies and the Emergence of World Literature

Leuven University
Deadline: September 30

Project

Writer’s Residencies and the Emergence of World Literature’ is part of an encompassing research program ‘EMLIT: Pluriactivity, Digitality, Mobility, and the Emergence of World Literature.’ Funded by the KU Leuven Research Council and supervised by Núria Codina Solà, Jack McMartin, and Pieter Vermeulen, the program aims to understand how world literature is increasingly made in unstable conditions marked by pluriactive cultural labor, digital mediation, and changing mobility regimes. Theorizing contemporary world literature as a process of permanent and never fully stable emergence, EMLIT aims to generate innovative and empirically grounded insights into the aesthetic, lived, and institutional realities of contemporary world literature and its agents. Combining textual analysis with sociological and ethnographic methods, EMLIT aims to set a new theoretical and analytical standard for an inductive approach to world literature, to gather empirical data about the lived reality of literary emergence, and to examine the main aesthetic forms this emergence takes.

You can apply for this job no later than September 30, 2026 via the online application tool

More info:

Join a research team exploring how contemporary world literature is made by studying the role of writer's residencies.

14/08/2026

PhD "Climate, Cooperation and Community in Asia"
Utrecht University
Department of History and Art History DEADLINE: 15 August 2026

The project asks the following interlinked questions. How did climate change affect social cohesion at intra- and inter-group levels in rural Asian communities? And what can this tell us about how communities respond to climate-based disruption more generally?

These overarching questions open onto several potential research avenues, that can be pursued depending on the candidate’s interests and expertise as well as data availability. This could include research focused within or across countries, as well as across different levels and dimensions of cooperation. We expect such a project to require engagement with quantitative and qualitative sources, with the possibility of fieldwork. Through a comparative and long run study of rural Asia, the project will investigate interactions between climate, institutions and cooperative behaviour to understand the drivers of cooperation through historical analysis, with additional insight from the field of social psychology. By clarifying when cooperation succeeds or fails in historically climate-vulnerable agricultural contexts, the project offers lessons for climate adaptation in other countries around the world.

More info:

Are you a curious, research-driven historian with an interest to collaborate in a team that is interdisciplinary? Then this is the vacancy for you!

14/08/2026

PhD Media and Democracy in the 1970s
Utrecht University
Department of History and Art History DEADLINE: 6 September 2026

We offer a four-year full-time PhD-position as part of an NWO-funded VIDI-project which investigates the transformation of democracy in the final quarter of the twentieth century through the lens of media governance. We look for a curious, creative and collaborative historian to provide a crucial piece of that puzzle by investigating the contestation of the public media model from below in the long 1970s.

More info:

Are you interested in the history of democracy? Join us in the NWO-funded project Democracy and the (de-)regulation of the media in Europe since the 1970s.

09/08/2026

Assistant Professor in African American History

Stanford University

Deadline: Sep 30 2026 - 11:55pm PDT

The Department of African and African American Studies (DAAAS) at Stanford University invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor in African American History. We seek scholars whose research focuses on any historical period, from the colonial era to the present, and whose work advances the study of African American lives, histories, and experiences.

We welcome applications from candidates working across a broad range of historical approaches and methodologies. Areas of specialization may include, but are not limited to, inter-imperial histories of slavery, emancipation, and freedom; the Black Atlantic and Caribbean encounters; race and medicine; Black political thought; the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; Black internationalisms and culture.

Successful applicants will be expected to teach our undergraduate Foundations of African American Studies course (which covers a broad chronological period and multiple disciplinary perspectives), supervise undergraduate research, and participate in the department’s interdisciplinary curriculum. While DAAAS does not yet have a graduate program, the successful candidate may find opportunities to work with graduate students via Stanford’s Department of History.

To be considered, applicants must hold a Ph.D in African American History or a closely related field, or demonstrate equivalent professional distinction at the time of appointment.

Candidates currently enrolled in a PhD or equivalent international degree-granting program will be considered, provided the degree is in hand by the start date.

Applicants must have demonstrated a commitment to effective teaching and mentoring and the ability to establish and sustain a world-class research trajectory.

The Department of African and African American Studies (DAAAS) at Stanford University invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor in African American History. We seek scholars whose research focuses on any historical period, from the colonial era to the pre...

30/07/2026

PhD student in the cultural study of resistance (digital humanities)

Deadline: 21/9/2026

Position description
The Faculty of Social Sciences and Solvay Business School, Research Group ECHO: Media, Culture & Politics, and the Faculty of Languages and Humanities, Research Group CLIC: Centre for Literary & Intermedial Crossings are looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant.

As part of a newly created Brussels Centre for Interdisciplinary Resistance Studies (Inter-RESIST), you conduct research with a view to obtaining a doctoral thesis.

Research theme: The research focuses on how resistance is enacted and mediated across time and media. Through cross-historical and cross-media analyses of archival, textual, visual, and digital sources, itstudies how repertoires of resistance evolve and travel. This includes the study of ‘everyday resistance’, ‘constructive resistance’, ‘reverse discourse’ and ‘networked dissent’ (see, i.a., James C. Scott, Mona Lilja). Inter-RESIST focuses on civilian resistance against dehumanization in Belgium as well as transnationally throughout the twentieth century, and specifically resistance to the Holocaust; resistance to post-war racism targeting migrants and their descendants; and resistance to the genocide against Palestinians and its historical antecedents.

PhD student in the cultural study of resistance (digital humanities)