Junior Visiting Researcher - Doctoral Candidate 1 - EUTERPE

The Department of Gender Studies at Central European University (CEU, Austria) invites applications for a 36-month fixed-term position as Doctoral Candidate (DC) in Gender Studies to research and write a PhD thesis within the area “Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe” and simultaneously to work on the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network project “EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective”. The name of the position in the employment contract according to the Academic Staff Handbook of CEU will be Junior Visiting Researcher.

We welcome applications from candidates with an MA degree, a demonstrable interest and experience in Gender Studies, English language skills, a willingness to undertake two months of guided internship at an Associate Partner of the DC's choice, as well as a willingness to spend a period of 6 months on secondment at the University of Oviedo (Spain).

Your main responsibilities:

The successful candidate will research “Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe” as part of WP 1 (Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe). The Doctoral Candidate will be employed by and enrolled on a PhD at CEU for 36 months from 1^st September 2023.

Applicants are requested to design a PhD research proposal engaging with the following:

larger questions of transnational feminist literary theory with an aim to explore impacts of transnational turn upon methods of literary interpretation (narrative methods, close and distant reading, content analyses). The research will focus in particular on specific problems of traveling concepts and traveling theories; problems of studying identities in literary texts; questions of multilingualism and literary translations.

The aim of this research is to systematize the main theoretical approaches to transnationalism in literary studies and to bring them into dialogue with theoretical and conceptual gender analyses, thus building the framework for a new approach in feminist literary theory. This line of research is directly related to one of the main impact outputs of this project, the Dictionary of Transnational Women’s Literature in Europe and will facilitate the structuring of the Dictionary’s theoretical and conceptual frame.

As a part of your research training, you will have the following duties:

• Collectively with the other Doctoral Candidates participate in the EUTERPE Transnational Literary Research Laboratory creating the content of the Dictionary/Catalogue/Podcast Library following the Doctoral Candidate’s chosen track of contribution.
• Enroll as PhD students in respective PhD programs with the university, which is recruiting them; for this post it is PhD in Comparative Gender Studies at CEU PU. They have to fulfill all the requirements of the program and work towards the completion of their PhD thesis within the deadline set by the university.
• Spend a compulsory secondment period of 6 months at the University of Oveido (Spain) during the second year of their tenure. During this period they will receive further research training and will conduct comparative research.
• Undertake two months of guided internship with a EUTERPE Associate Partner that works on a field relevant to the Doctoral Candidate's expertise.
• Work closely with their employability mentor in the development of a bespoke Employability Enhancement Plan.
• Attend the project-wide training events including 4 education events in the form of summer and spring schools.
• Participate in the EUTERPE Final conference and promotion of the Dictionary of Transnational Women’s Literature in Europe, the Digital Catalogue and Podcast Library in Vienna in the fall of 2026.
• Contribute to the final project report in the summer of 2026.