Postdoctoral Research Fellow: Global Socio-Economic Rights, Local Contexts: Work in East Africa and Western Europe, 1880 to the Present

Full time (35 hours per week)

Fixed term 1st October 2024 until 30th September 2027

We are looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to work on the AHRC-funded project ‘Global Socio-Economic Rights, Local Contexts: Work in East Africa and Western Europe, 1880 to the Present’

The Opportunity:

This post is fixed-term and full-time (35 hours per week), from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2027.

We are looking for a highly motivated and professional individual to work on the AHRC -funded project ‘Global Socio-Economic Rights, Local Contexts: Work in East Africa and Western Europe, 1880 to the Present’. The project investigates how contemporaries since the late nineteenth century, and especially between the end of the Second World War and global economic downturn in 1973, have understood and expressed socio-economic rights: in particular, related to work (or choosing not to work), to earn one's own money and to maintain certain 'living standards'. With a global perspective, it explores four connected case studies: the UK, Germany, Kenya and Tanzania. This project suggests that work is central to understandings of social rights. It asks how ideas about and policies on work-related rights have been articulated in different settings, over time, and diffused globally, through interpersonal and international connections, new developments in international law and changing experiences of and expectations about the relationship between the economy, society and the state. It also reflects on the specific sociological contexts and connotations of ideas about rights related to work, including how women, ethnic and religious minorities, children and the elderly, have fitted into and shaped discussions and policies.

The fieldwork for this post will be undertaken primarily in the United Kingdom, Kenya and Tanzania.

Your skills and attributes for success: 

• a completed PhD in African History, Global History or related discipline which demonstrates research expertise pertinent to this project. 
• proven expertise in the historical research techniques required for the project.
• demonstrated quality of research performance.
• proven ability to work independently and to meet deadlines.

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