Alfred Landecker Foundation Full-time Lecturer Program for Postdocs

Up to five university lectureships will each run for five years. The selection process is led by the Alfred Landecker Foundation’s Academic Council.

The School of Divinity will support applications from qualified candidates. If you are interested in this opportunity at the University of Edinburgh, please contact Dr Hannah Holtschneider for an informal discussion.

Alfred Landecker Foundation

The program

The program’s mission is to support outstanding, cutting-edge research by individuals on the following topics:

• the history and aftermath of the Holocaust
• the social and political transmission of memory of the Holocaust
• the influence of conspiracy ideologies
• group-based enmity (for example antisemitism and racism) as a structural threat to democracy

Because there is no lack of research on such matters, we are in this call explicitly looking for applications with innovative approaches that relate to present-day challenges regarding the politics of memory and democracy. We are also interested in projects that deal with the methods and practices for educating and imparting knowledge about history and threats to democracy in the digital age.

About the Foundation

Within various program areas, the Alfred Landecker Foundation funds projects and efforts that raise awareness of the causes of the Holocaust and its consequences, that keep the memory of victims alive, and that help safeguard the democratic values of a peaceful and united Europe. With a view to the present and to the future, the program will serve to strengthen these values as well as the inviolable dignity of the individual by establishing an academic network of Alfred Landecker lecturers and their research projects.

Application details

The call for applications is open to applicants regardless of their current place of residence and their country of origin. To apply, an acceptance letter from a European or Israeli university is required in the second stage of the application process (see below).

The host university will be provided with up to 100,000 euros annually to cover the salary of the grantee and their personal research budget. Alfred Landecker lecturers are employed directly at their respective host university.

Eligibility requirements:

• Within 5 years after PhD: Applicants must have successfully completed their doctorates within the last five years at the time when the application is submitted. The five years start with the date where the applicant was informed about passing the PhD and corresponding grade (not the day of the award ceremony). Parental leave and childcare will be accounted for with maximum 2 years per child.
• Time frame of 5 years, starting in the 2022/23 academic winter semester:The research project at the heart of the application should have an overall time frame of five years, starting in autumn 2022.
• Host university in Europe or Israel: The host university must be in Europe or Israel; in addition, it must directly employ the grantee and provide the Alfred Landecker Foundation with an annual account of funds for each fiscal year.
• Teaching & Knowledge dissemination: Disseminating the knowledge to students and the wider public is highly important. Hence, the lecturers must have the possibility to conceptualize classes and to teach at their host university, linked to their research project. However, it is important that the lecturers are not obligated to teach at the host university.

Process and documents to be submitted:

The application process consists of three stages.

• First stage: Interested applicants submit a short 2-page project description, an application form, CV and list of publications.
• Second stage: Selected applicants are asked to submit a detailed project description and additional necessary documents for the program.
• Third stage: Selected applicants are invited for an interview with the Academic Council of the Alfred Landecker Foundation

For the first stage, interested applicants need to submit the following documents. Incomplete submissions will not be considered. All submitted documents must be in English and compiled in one PDF-document (max. 8 MB) in the following order:

• Filled-out application form
• Project description (2 pages, max. 5000 characters incl. spaces) that includes information on the problem or research question, the methodological approach, how the project differs from existing research on the Holocaust, how the project relates to current challenges within the programmatic scope of the Alfred Landecker Foundation, and how the potential for (science) communication is going to be used.
• CV in tabular form (max 2 pages)
• List of publications (max 2 pages)

Please submit your application until 28 February 2022, to lecturer@alfredlandecker.org. Both the subject line of the E-Mail and the name of the PDF document need to be “Last Name_First Name_Name of host university”. The interviews will be held in May or June 2022.

The Alfred Landecker Foundation seeks to have a diverse group of lecturers. Members of groups underrepresented in academia are therefore particularly encouraged to apply. If you have questions about the application process, please send an email to lecturer@alfredlandecker.org.