Job Opening: Post-Doc & Two PhD Studentships on the Transformation of Shi’a

The Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham seeks to appoint one Post-doctoral Research Fellow and to award two PhD studentships to work on the ERC-funded project

The Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham seeks to appoint one Post-doctoral Research Fellow and to award two PhD studentships to work on the ERC-funded project ‘Creating an Alternative umma: Clerical Authority and Religio-political Mobilisation in Transnational Shii Islam (ALTERUMMA)’ project, led by Professor Oliver Scharbrodt. This interdisciplinary project investigates the transformation of Shii Islam in the Middle East and Europe since the 1950s. The project begins in January 2018 and will in the course of its five-year duration include four post-doctoral researchers and three PhD students.

The Research Fellow and PhD students will work on the first thematic area of the project which begins in January 2018. As part of this thematic area, the various ways in which Shii clerical authorities in Iran and Iraq have positioned themselves towards the modern nation-state are explored.

• The research fellow will investigate the role of senior clerical figures in Iran in the lead-up to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. For more information, see:http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BDS780/research-fellow/
• One PhD student will work on how the clerical establishment in Najaf has intervened in and positioned itself towards post-2003 Iraqi sectarian politics and responded to the sectarianisation of Middle Eastern geopolitics. For more information, see: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BDE834/phd-studentship-iraqi-clerics-and-the-state-after-2003/
• The other PhD student will work on the position of current clerical authorities in Iran towards the Islamic Republic and its underpinning ideology and their religio-political interventions in a political system that fuses clerical and political authority. For more information, see: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BDE835/phd-studentship-iranian-clerics-and-the-state-in-post-revolutionary-iran/

Further information about the project, Visit: cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/211385_en.html