Ad Astra Fellow - Assistant Professor in One Health
The UCD School of History seeks a distinguished scholar to contribute to the development of a transdisciplinary academic field across UCD. The appointee will collaborate with the School of English, Drama, and Film and play a key role in advancing research initiatives in 'One Health'.
The position requires expertise in methodologies to understand the history and representation of developments in medical and environmental theories and practice, as well as the social, political, and philosophical values that underpin diagnosis, treatment, and policy.
The successful candidate will be expected to focus on Africa or South America and contribute to humanities research initiatives in 'One Health'. Key areas of interest include:
1. To analyse the interconnected origins of disease circuits across human and animal communities and untangle the implications for contemporary disease outbreaks;
2. To deconstruct colonial and postcolonial power relations in contemporary understandings, depictions, and management of diseases, environmental crises, and zoonoses by local, national and international health organisations and bodies, including non-state actors;
3. To examine the development of pest and biological controls, in the context of twentieth-century development policies and concerns over food production, safety and security;
4. To centre the voices, lifeways, and experiences of colonised and/or indigenous communities, and analyse their responses to medical interventions, such as vaccination and sanitation programmes;
5. To make methodological contributions (a) to ongoing discussions about how to uncover new types of non-human environmental data sets (archives), such as herbariums or historic microbe collections, and (b) to debates on to represent non-speaking subjects;
6. To demonstrate the centrality of narrative, cultural forms, and discursive systems to the construction, representation and dissemination of knowledge.
The Ad Astra Fellowship includes one funded PhD studentship, an annual research budget, and a reduced teaching load. The successful candidate will be appointed for five years with the possibility of permanency after a four-year performance review.