The University of Antwerp is seeking to fill the following full-time vacancies (m/f) at the Ruusbroecgenootschap, research centre associated with the Faculty of Arts:

Two researchers in the context of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts

Job description:
Two 3 years positions are available at the Ruusbroecgenootschap, a research centre for the history of spirituality in the Low Countries, in the context of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts (MITT).
MITT brings together five expert teams to provide substantive and methodological training on late medieval intellectual history, philosophy and literature to a cohort of early-stage researchers. MITT focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life and literature in the Rhineland and the Low Countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages. The project seeks to develop a new perspective on late medieval textual culture in the Low Countries and the Rhineland by looking at the readership, reception and circulation of religious and intellectual literature.

Position 1: Franciscan observant literature: description of the reinvention of the mystical tradition by authors from the Franciscan observance movement (ca. 1500)

This project studies the emergence of new mystical texts originating in the observant movement of the Franciscan order in the Low Countries from the last quarter of the fifteenth-century onwards. The project focuses on a group of texts and authors connected to the Franciscan convent of Malines in order to position the new initiatives in the history of mysticism and its relations to older texts, as the Franciscan authors made extensive use of the writings of Ruusbroec, Tauler and Merswin in formulating religious ideals in accordance with the observance.

Position 2: Description and analysis of the popularity of fourteenth-century mystical Dutch and German texts in the sixteenth-century
This project studies the sixteenth-century revival of mysticism among women in the Low Rhine and Brabantine area, in centres such as Arnhem, Oisterwijk, and Diest, and considers the role of the Cologne Carthusians in this process through their spiritual guidance and editions of contemporaneous and classic, fourteenth-century mystical texts. This project analyses new mystical texts like the widely read Evangelische peerle (Margarita evangelica in Latin) and other texts, primarily by female writers. The project aims to identify the textual and spiritual specificity of the sixteenth-century texts in relation to the fourteenth-century classics, and analyses how they reflect new religious practices and religious ideas.

Profile and requirements:
The applicant should have a Masters degree in Humanities in a related subject or a degree at an equivalent level, and should have obtained this degree no longer than four years ago.

To qualify as an Early Stage Researcher under the terms of the EC funding, which aims to promote mobility within the research community, applicants may not have obtained their degree in Belgium. Moreover, to be eligible for an ESR-position, candidates must not have been resident in the country of the host institution for more than twelve months in the past three years.

Knowledge of Middle Dutch literature and/or spiritual history of the Low Countries, manuscript studies (position 1); knowledge of Medieval German and/or Middle Dutch literature and/or spiritual history of the Low Countries, Latin, and manuscript studies (position 2).

If the research output leads to a doctoral dissertation this will result in a doctors degree from the Faculty of Arts at Antwerpen University, with a professor of the Ruusbroecgenootschap acting as supervisor.

We offer
Two 3 years positions at the Ruusbroecgenootschap, Faculty of Arts, University of Antwerp (Belgium) in the context of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts.

Application procedure
Applications including a curriculum vitae and a writing sample (MA thesis or relevant publication) are to be sent in electronically to thom.merten@sua.ac.be