PhD Position in Literary Studies

Organisation/Company KU LEUVEN Research Field Literature » European literature Literature » Comparative literature Cultural studies » European studies Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Application Deadline 30 Sep 2026 - 23:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Offer Starting Date 1 Jan 2027 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Reference Number BAP-2026-552 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

Writer’s Residencies and the Emergence of World Literature’ is part of an encompassing research program ‘EMLIT: Pluriactivity, Digitality, Mobility, and the Emergence of World Literature.’ Funded by the KU Leuven Research Council and supervised by Núria Codina Solà, Jack McMartin, and Pieter Vermeulen, the program aims to understand how world literature is increasingly made in unstable conditions marked by pluriactive cultural labor, digital mediation, and changing mobility regimes. Theorizing contemporary world literature as a process of permanent and never fully stable emergence, EMLIT aims to generate innovative and empirically grounded insights into the aesthetic, lived, and institutional realities of contemporary world literature and its agents. Combining textual analysis with sociological and ethnographic methods, EMLIT aims to set a new theoretical and analytical standard for an inductive approach to world literature, to gather empirical data about the lived reality of literary emergence, and to examine the main aesthetic forms this emergence takes.

The project ‘Writer’s Residencies and the Emergence of World Literature’ explores writer’s residencies as key sites in the emergence of contemporary world literature. It focuses on the relation between literary creativity and place through a comparative study of three very differently situated European residencies: the Brussels-based Passa Porta, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators at Hald Hovedgaard, and the Bergman Estate, situated on the Baltic Sea Island of Fårö. By comparing the experience and representation of place and space in these initiatives’ self-presentation, in their participants’ reported experiences, and selected literary texts that emerged from the residencies, this project offers an inductive and comparative account of the trajectories along which contemporary world literature emerges. The project will undertake a survey of the writers who participated in the three residency programs in the past five years. It will map the lived reality of the residencies through site visits and interviews. Finally, it will select a number of literary texts produced by participating writers for in-depth analysis to assess the impact of residency-related experiences of mobility on literary form.

The successful candidate will undertake the following tasks:

• Complete a doctoral dissertation that provides an analysis of the role of European writer’s residencies in the emergence of contemporary world literature.
• Work together with the project’s institutional partners (TransArtists, Passa Porta and others) and make a number of research trips in Europe.
• Disseminate preliminary research findings through scholarly publications in journals and edited volumes, presentations within the research group and at national and international conferences and workshops.
• Work on the Leuven campus at least three days per week, and travel to Antwerp for meetings with the rest of the EMLIT research team at least once every three weeks (a 40-minute train ride).
• Collaborate with the program’s three supervisors and two other junior researchers in the organization of workshops, conference panels, and co-publications.
• Participate in the doctoral training program.
• Devote a limited amount of time (no more than one day a week) to teaching activities or supporting assignments, and take up exam invigilator tasks.

We are looking for a candidate with the following qualifications and capacities:

• You hold an MA in Translation Studies, Literary Studies, Cultural Sociology, or a comparable degree.
• You have a very high proficiency in English. Scandinavian language or other multilingual skills are an asset.
• You have a passion for contemporary literature and are motivated to develop into an outstanding scholar working at the interdisciplinary intersection of translation studies and world literature.
• You are not only interested in reading and analyzing literary texts, but you are also fascinated by the social life of literature beyond the page and the lived experience of literary creators.
• You see academic scholarship not as a solitary activity but as a collaborative effort, and you are ready to play an active role in your research community.
• You have the skills to independently