3 Postdoctoral Research Positions for ERC Advanced Grant RECUR

3 Postdoctoral Research Positions for ERC Advanced Grant RECUR

KU Leuven is an autonomous university. It was founded in 1425. It was born of and has grown within the Catholic tradition.

How does coloniality continue to shape contemporary Europe – and what role do theological imaginaries and institutions play in sustaining or contesting it? Would you like to investigate these questions as part of an ambitious, interdisciplinary ERC Advanced Grant project? The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KU Leuven hosts RECUR: Towards a Critical Political Theology of Coloniality, an ERC Advanced Grant project led by Prof. Judith Gruber (2027–2031). RECUR investigates how colonial power continues to operate in contemporary Europe through political-theological discourses across religious, secular, and academic domains. Focusing on Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, the project combines qualitative discourse analysis, discourse network analysis, and critical theological reflection to develop a new framework for understanding the relationship between theology, coloniality, and contemporary forms of power. The three postdoctoral researchers will join an interdisciplinary and internationally oriented research team and contribute to a shared research agenda combining empirical investigation, theoretical development, and conceptual reflection. Researchers will be based in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and participate in its wider intellectual and research community.

Responsibilities

As a postdoctoral researcher in RECUR, you will contribute to the development of a Critical Political Theology of Coloniality through a combination of empirical research, conceptual reflection, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Each researcher will take primary responsibility for leading empirical research in one of the project's three national contexts (Belgium, Germany, or Ireland). Within their national context, researchers will build and analyse empirical corpora from three domains in which political-theological practices of coloniality become visible: sexualized violence in the Roman Catholic Church, remembrance practices of state violence, and academic knowledge production in Post-/Security Studies. The resulting empirical analyses will provide the foundation for a collaborative process of theological reflection, conceptual and methodological development, and interdisciplinary theory-building through which the RECUR team will jointly develop a Critical Political Theology of Coloniality.

You will:

• conduct independent and collaborative research contributing to the development of a Critical Political Theology of Coloniality.
• take primary responsibility for coordinating empirical research in one of RECUR's three national contexts: Belgium, Germany, or Ireland.
• build, code, and analyse qualitative empirical corpora across the project's three domains of inquiry: sexualized violence in the Roman Catholic Church, remembrance practices of state violence, and academic knowledge production in Post-/Security Studies.
• conduct discourse analysis and discourse network analysis and contribute to the development of RECUR's comparative dataset on political-theological practices of coloniality.
• actively contribute to the conceptual and theoretical development of the project, engaging critically with questions of theology, coloniality, power, authority, memory, and security.
• work closely with the Principal Investigator and other postdoctoral researchers to develop shared analytical frameworks, concepts, and methodologies and to contribute to the comparative synthesis across the project's national and thematic domains.
• publish high-quality research outputs in leading international journals and edited volumes.
• present research findings at international conferences, workshops, and project events and contribute to building the project's international research network.
• participate in the organization of research seminars, workshops, conferences, and other academic and public engagement activities related to the project.
• Subject to separate arrangements with the Faculty, opportunities may be available to contribute to teaching and/or student supervision, enabling researchers with academic career ambitions to develop their teaching experience alongside their RECUR research
• contribute to the development of future collaborative research initiatives arising from the project.

Website unit

Researchers will enjoy substantial intellectual freedom in shaping their individual research trajectories while contributing to the collective goals of the project.

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Eligibility and Requirements

• PhD in Theology, Religious Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, Anthropology, Sociology, History, Cultural Studies, or a related discipline, completed by the start of