International Fellowships DSM 2020-2021
The German Maritime Museum, Leibniz Institute for Maritime History (DSM), is offering international fellowships at both PhD Candidate and postdoctoral level for applicants who are engaging in interdisciplinary object-based research and are interested in becoming part of a new exhibition programme based around the cultural and political significance of the relationship between humans and the sea. The Fellowships are aimed at non-German scientists who are not already working for a longer period at German scientific institutions.
International fellows will be granted a stipend, to be determined according to the candidate’s level of education, the length of the fellowship and the quality of the proposed project. All travel costs will be included in the stipend. The fellow will be part of the museum’s team, will obtain access to the museum’s collections and will have the opportunity to organize workshops in cooperation with the museum. The fellow will be encouraged to engage actively in interdisciplinary forums and academic teaching, and will also be an active part of the museum’s outreach programme.
The collection of the German Maritime Museum houses a wide range of technical artefacts, which represent unique and sometimes difficult paths and thus reflect the complex entanglement between the sea and its uses and misuses, its scientific exploration as well as its perceptions. This is mirrored in the construction and object biography of technological devices, such as telescopes, compasses or tidal machines. The museum’s collection also includes a vast selection of historical objects that demonstrate the richness of maritime material culture, such as ship models, artefacts of daily life on board ships or clothing. Furthermore, the museum’s archive keeps documents and visual material related to most topics of Maritime History.
In the framework of the exhibition and research tasks planned for 2019-2020 applications should be located in one of the following fields:
Cultural History of Technical Artefacts
History of Science
Science and Technology Studies
Marine Environmental History
Social and Cultural History of Shipbuilding
Cultural and Social History of Passenger Shipping
Cultural History of Maritime Warfare
The scope of the fellowship will consist in choosing one or a group of artefacts or records of archival material in order to assess its source value and to investigate their significance for the history of humankind’s relationship with seas and oceans. Moreover the researcher would help to develop innovative forms of science communication around technical artefacts both in the framework of the future overall exhibition of the German Maritime Museum as well as during the project itself. Thus, the fellow will be asked to both contribute to the exhibition planning and the evaluation of the archival and material collection.
Interested researchers are invited to send proposals of 800-1000 words including a description of the research idea and planned outcomes, a work plan with indication of the preferred period of the year and an academic curriculum vitae till the 15th of December 2019 to:
Dr. Martin Weiss (weiss@dsm.museum)