[Commlist] PhD position in Children's Media and Diversity

 Vacancy: PhD position in Children's Media and Diversity

Are you looking for a challenging position in a dynamic setting? The 
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) currently has a fully 
funded vacant PhD position as part of the Children's Media and Diversity 
project led by principal investigators Dr. Balazs Boross and Dr. Rik 
Spanjers.

What are you going to do?

Children's media have long been treated with suspicion: educators, 
politicians, parents, and scholars want to know what children are 
learning, from whom, and in what contexts. As such, aesthetic, 
narrative, technological, and discursive shifts in and around children's 
content provide a productive lens for exploring how culture – at 
different times and at different places – defines what is normal and how 
attempts to challenge the status quo are imagined, represented, and 
articulated in social practice.

This PhD project takes the notion of diversity as its center of inquiry 
and examines how emergent understandings of diversity are mobilized, 
contested, and shared across the contemporary landscape of children's 
media. How is diversity discursively produced and translated for and by 
children? What are the implicit and explicit rationales to celebrate or 
question diversity? What kinds of stories of diversity are being told 
and in what forms, how are they received, and what kinds of practices 
surround them? What does the child implicated in these stories look 
like? Which aspects of diversity are considered normal, and which are 
problematized? How do the stories and images of children’s content 
connect to or provoke broader social debates? How do representations of 
diversity and the diversity of practices speak to, speak about, and 
relate to the politicization of children's media and childhood from a 
cross-cultural, socio-historical perspective?

Candidates can work on a project of their own choosing within the 
general theme of children's media and diversity, and are encouraged to 
think creatively in terms of research design. We invite interested 
candidates to prepare short proposals (details below) that might 
explore, for example:

* Representations of gender, race, disability, class and/or sexuality in 
animation, children's books, comics, games, social media, or other media
* Children and celebrity culture; vloggers and influencers
* Children and fandom
* Moral panics, discourses on diversity, and childhood ideologies
* Queer children, queer families and the queering of children's media
* Parental mediation, children, and technology
* Children's media use, identity, and everyday life
* Children as early adopters, target audiences, or future consumers of 
new media
* Transformations of childhood (and understandings of diversity) across 
different media ecologies
* Children's media from local and cross-cultural perspectives
* Media and early childhood

Tasks and responsibilities:
* submission of a PhD thesis within the period of appointment;
* participating in meetings of the project research group and developing 
a shared database;
* publishing single-authored and co-authored outputs derived from your 
PhD research, including peer reviewed academic articles;
* presenting intermediate research results at workshops and conferences, 
including at least one international conference outside of the Netherlands;
* organising knowledge dissemination activities;
* (co-)teaching courses at BA-level in the second and third year of the 
appointment (maximum 0,2 fte per year);
* participation in the Research School and Faculty of Humanities PhD 
training programmes.

What do you have to offer?

We are looking for intellectually curious, original, and versatile 
candidates who have experience or proven interest in working across 
genres, media and disciplinary boundaries.

Your experience and profile
Candidates need to have the following qualifications:
* a completed (research) Master's degree in media studies, cultural 
analysis, gender studies, disability studies, cultural anthropology, or 
a related discipline. You may apply if you have not yet completed your 
Master's degree only if you provide a signed letter from your supervisor 
stating that you will graduate before 01 February 2025;
* excellent research skills demonstrated by an outstanding Master's 
thesis and a demonstrable capacity to develop a track record of 
publishing in high-ranking journals and/or with leading presses;
* demonstrable knowledge of and experience with (most of) the following 
research methods: textual analysis (narrative, discourse, semiotic and 
visual analysis; digital analysis), ethnography (participant 
observation; individual interviews);
* a strong cooperative attitude and willingness to engage in 
collaborative research;
* enthusiasm for communicating academic research to non-academic audiences;
* excellent command of English.

Please note that if you already hold a doctorate/PhD or are working 
towards obtaining a similar degree elsewhere, you will not be admitted 
to a doctoral programme at the UvA.

What can we offer you?

We offer a temporary employment contract for the period of 48 months. 
The first contract will be for 16 months, with an extension for the 
following 32 months, contingent on a positive performance evaluation 
within the first 12 months. The employment contract is for 38 hours a 
week. The preferred starting date is 01 February 2025.


Questions?

If you have any questions about the position or the department, please 
contact during office hours:

Dr. Balazs Boross: (b.boross /at/ uva.nl)
Assistant professor in Media Studies

Dr. Rik Spanjers: (r.spanjers /at/ uva.nl)
Assistant professor in Media Studies

Job application

If you feel the profile fits you, and you are interested in the job, we 
look forward to receiving your application. You can apply online via the 
link on UvA`s vacancy website: 
https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/PhD-Position-in-Children's-Media-and-Diversity/803423702/. 
We will accept applications until 05 November 2024, 23:59 CET.

Your application should include the following information:
* a motivation letter (750 words);
* a research proposal of 1000-1500 words, showing how you would approach 
the project, including clear research objectives. This proposal must 
include an account of context(s) and/or objects which you would explore, 
the theoretical framing, the method(s) you would employ, relevance and 
innovation of the research;
* a list of academic sources (5-8) which indicate current ‘state of the 
art’ knowledge and methodological approach in your field (the area of 
children`s media and diversity you want to focus on);
* full academic CV including address and contact details, previous 
education and relevant employment, conference presentations and 
publications if applicable, grants/honors, language competency and 
computational skills;
* a list of all Master-level modules you have taken, with an official 
transcript of grades;
* a writing sample, such as a paper or a chapter of your Master`s thesis
* the names and email addresses of two references, including your 
advisor, who may be approached by the selection committee.

Please submit the required information in 1 pdf by uploading in the 
required field ‘CV’.

The first round of interviews will be held in the course of end November.
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