PhD positions: ERC project BodyCapital, Université de Strasbourg
Université de Strasbourg
Societies, actors and government in Europe, SAGE UMR7363
ERC BodyCapital
Call for PhD funding applications
The ERC Advanced Grant programme “The healthy self as body capital:
individuals, market-based societies and body politics in visual
twentieth century Europe (BodyCapital)” led by Christian Bonah
(Université de Strasbourg) and Anja Laukötter (MPIHD, Berlin) on the
understanding of body capital and its history, through the twentieth
century history of visual mass media (film, TV, Internet) and inédits
(amateur, family and private visuals) is now accepting applications for
up to 3 three-year PhD positions.
The application deadline is 20 May 2017.
Interviews will be scheduled on the Monday 26 June 2017 in Strasbourg
(in-person interviews will be preferential, with some travel funding
provided upon request). The contracts will begin 1 September 2017.
Project description:
Do you know how much rapid eye movement (REM) sleep you need to work
efficiently, do you look at food labels to ensure that you are getting
all the required vitamins and minerals or know someone who uses a step
counter to know if they are getting enough physical activity? These are
just a few examples of our perceptions of health and the resulting
individual practices in twentieth century Europe. In fact, this century
may be characterized by the development of products and techniques for
the body and its health. Bodily health has evolved as a new form of
capital (Bourdieu 1979): a form of symbolic capital that can be
transformed into economic capital. These are not only witnessed by, but
contributed to and were affected by, a flood of visual media that
circulated transnationally in the advent of a media society. Thus at
the center of the research group investigations are moving images that
are oriented towards the idea of informing, improving or educating on
life and health.
The timeframe of the project (1895-2005) starts with the invention of
public health, the rapid emergence and diffusion of mechanically
produced images and moving pictures and the conception of liberal
economic theory and practices at the beginning of the twentieth century
and extends to the reinvention of new public health, the Internet
revolution and the economic crisis nurturing economic neo-liberalism in
the 1990s. It stops before the emergence of YouTube (2005) transforming
visual Internet practices and the financial crisis in 2007/08. At the
center of the period lie the industry-based therapeutic revolution and
the invention of television coupled with the epidemiological transition
(increasing life expectancy and chronic disease emergence) and the
golden age of the welfare state.
The research group aims to provide a socio-historical understanding of
how an autonomous, self–optimizing, health-managing individual has
emerged as a dominating self-identity in light of sanitary knowledge and
practices in European societies at the end of the twentieth century. To
achieve this, we compare developments in three European countries that
are central to the economy and to visual production, but which differ in
their visual culture and their embrace of neo-liberal market policies
during the twentieth century: France, Germany and Great Britain.
The research group has identified four central subject entries that the
thesis project proposals should address in one way or another (at least
one):
- history of food/ nutrition;
- history of movement/exercise/sports;
- history of sexuality/reproduction/infant;
These themes are simultaneously physiological bodily functions and
traditional public health objectives. They are fundamental human needs
and correspond to particular economic sectors. As such, all four
subjects combine concepts and practices spanning across the health and
life sciences, individual and public health, body history and economic
history and are therefore ideally suited to study historical
transformations leading to market-based societies and body politics in
visual twentieth century Europe.
At the core of the BodyCapital programme three analytical issues are
being addressed: a) How can the internalization of body capital and
health demand be better understood from a visual perspective? b) How can
we historically understand the production of body capital as a general
trend, which at the same time acts as a marker of social difference and
class-boundedness in an age of global and freely circulating
information, mobility and education? Are the social determinations of
relationships with the body and health stable or do they undergo
historical changes? c) How do technical transformations and the
diversification of visuals in television and digital media participate
in body capital internalization? These questions are to be considered
through case studies conducted with a double comparative/entangled
history approach in order to establish similarities, differences and
transfers between the three countries (France, Germany, Great Britain)
and three major time periods (film, TV, Internet).
The 3 PhD thesis projects are to be case studies focusing on topics
related to one or more of the project’s four subject entries (history of
food/nutrition; movement/exercise/sports;
sexuality/reproduction/infant; dependency/addiction/
Context and working conditions:
The PhD funding is in the form of a salary and not a scholarship. The
PhD student will be employed for the duration of 36 months (1 September
2017- 31 August 2020).
The thesis will be directed (or co-directed) by Christian Bonah
(Professor of medical history) or Anja Laukötter (PhD in history).
Students will be enrolled in the Social and Human Sciences doctoral
school at the University of Strasbourg and will be associated members of
the UMR research group SAGE (Societies, actors and government in
Europe).
The project may be conducted as a co-direction with another European
university, please indicate in the motivation letter if a co-direction
with another university would be relevant or advantageous for your
project and why.
Requirements and research skills:
The candidate must be a holder of a master’s degree from a highly
recognized university in the history of medicine, history, media
history, sociology/history of science, media or communication studies,
economic history, or related discipline.
The candidate must demonstrate a mastery of research techniques in
social sciences: archival work and sound analysis of textual and
audiovisual sources and good knowledge of the literature related to
their field of study.
The candidate must be able to work and write in English (writing skills
in French or German are also highly welcome). The thesis must be written
in English, French or German.
Candidates are asked to send:
- a motivation letter,
- a detailed CV
- a 3-4 page thesis project outline
- a chapter of their Masters thesis or a major article publication
- a letter of recommendation and two complementary reference names
by email to Christian Bonah (bonah@unistra.fr), Anja Laukötter (laukoetter@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
For further information or details on salary, please contact Tricia Close-Koenig.
* Note that, in addition, we are also accepting applications for a Post-doc position.