Deadline for applications: Jan 14, 2019
Foreseen starting date: September 1, 2019
Department Faculty of Law and Criminology – Human Rights Center
Contract: Limited duration
Degree requirements: Master’s degree in law, social and political sciences, anthropology or a related discipline
Occupancy rate: 100%
Vacancy Type: Research

Job Description

We are seeking to fill four full-time, 40-months, fully-funded PhD fellowships as part of the ERC funded research project “Righting Victim Participation in Transitional Justice” (ERC-2018-STG-804154). You will primarily be based at the Human Rights Center at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences.

The research project is a multi-disciplinary and multi-method study of the effects of victim participation in transitional justice processes. It studies the long-term (and often unforeseen) effects of this participation on victims and victim communities by analyzing how their perceptions of justice and of what their rights are change in response to their participation in transitional justice processes. The cases under consideration are Cambodia, the DRC, Tunisia and Guatemala. The aim is to map best practices that allow for more victim-oriented approaches to and understandings of transitional justice processes.

The project methodology requires that the PhD candidates spend about three months per year in the – post-conflict- country they are studying, to engage in participant observation, carry out interviews, collect documents, do focus groups and set up experimental designs.

We are looking for mature PhD candidates, ideally speaking with a research degree; and/or experience of doing fieldwork in one of these countries or in other post-conflict settings; and/or who speak one or more of the local languages of the case studies.
Our working language is English.

To apply, please send us:

• A cover letter outlining how your professional and research experience is relevant for this project, your motivation, and which case study you wish to be considered for
• a detailed CV (including publication list if available)
• a transcript of your degree(s)
  • If you have a foreign diploma in a language other than our national languages (Dutch, French or German) or English, please add a translation in one of the mentioned languages.
  • a ‘Certificate of equivalence’ is required for diplomas awarded outside the European Union (This can be requested via www.naricvlaanderen.be/en).
• two letters of recommendation, and
• a writing sample on a related topic (10.000 words maximum, in English, ideally an academic or research paper).

Applicants are invited to submit these documents (as one pdf file) via email to
tine.destrooper@clutterugent.be with the subject line “ERC PhD Application – name of the case study”.