Call for Application: PhD position

PhD position

Mecca in Morocco: Negotiating the Meanings of Hajj in Everday Life
(vacancy number: 214261) University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
https://www.rug.nl/about-us/ work-with-us/job- opportunities/overview? details=00347-02S000482P

Job description

The research project consists of extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Morocco to investigate the meanings and sociocultural embeddedness of pilgrimage to Mecca in contemporary Moroccan society.

The PhD study is one of the subprojects in a larger NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Researchl) funded cooperation between the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam for a project that studies modern articulations of pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj/Umra). Approaching pilgrimage from the perspective of ‘lived religion’, the project in which the PhD student will participate addresses the question how references to religiosity, social identifications and self-identity in personal pilgrimage accounts reflect the ways in which the habitus of narrators is informed by various cultural discourses simultaneously.

The PhD student is expected:
· to have an excellent master’s diploma (preferably a Research master) in Cultural Anthropology or another relevant discipline (by 1 November 2014 at latest)
· ample experience with ethnographic fieldwork
· to be ambitious, highly motivated and wishing to make a career in research
· to be fluent in English (both oral and written)
· to have an excellent profiency in (oral) Arabic, preferably the Moroccan-Arabic dialect
· to be able and willing to work in an interdisciplinary environment
· to have the abilities to finish the PhD thesis in four years; i.e. good skills in planning, taking initiatives, academic writing.

For more information, please contact:
dr. Marjo Buitelaar: m.w.buitelaar@rug.nl