07 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Antwerp, Belgium

• You will work actively on the ERC CoG project ReWorkChange – Remote Work and Social Change: An Anthropological Approach, under the supervision of Prof. Elisabetta Costa. The objective of the project is to investigate the social consequences of remote work. The project will conduct a comparative study of the consequences of remote work on people’s everyday lives in six countries: China, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands and Turkey. It will provide rich and compelling ethnographic evidence of everyday practices and will generate theories of social institutions and a broader theory of remote work and social change. What are the consequences of remote work and always-on-connectivity on people’s everyday lives? How do these affect social institutions such as the home, family, household and friendship, as well as broader processes of social change? ReWorkChange aims to answer these questions by delivering a comparative ethnographic study of the societal consequences of remote work. The project is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork. It builds on the methods of anthropology and digital anthropology that emphasize direct observation of places, media, technologies, and practices. You will conduct ethnographic research in Mexico.

• The objective of the ERC project is to investigate the social consequences of remote work.  The project will conduct a comparative study of the consequences of remote work on people’s everyday lives in six countries: China, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands and Turkey. It will provide rich and compelling ethnographic evidence of everyday practices and will generate theories of social institutions and a broader theory of remote work and social change. What are the consequences of remote work and always-on-connectivity on people’s everyday lives? How do these affect social institutions such as the home, family, household and friendship, as well as broader processes of social change? ReWorkChange aims to answer these questions by delivering a comparative ethnographic study of the societal consequences of remote work. The project is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork. It builds on the methods of anthropology and digital anthropology that emphasize direct observation of places, media, technologies, and practices. You will conduct ethnographic research in a field-site in Belgium
• You will develop your own post-doctoral project in close collaboration with ReWorkChange. You will jointly draft articles, books, and other outputs for scholarly publication. You will present your work at national and international conferences (50% FTE).

The Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies Research Group (TRICS) of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Antwerp is seeking post-doctoral candidates interested in developing a research proposal in the domain of Media Accessibility in collaboration with OPEN Expertise Centre for Accessible Media and Culture. Potential areas for exploration include, but are not limited to:

1. User Experience and Engagement: Investigating how accessibility features impact user experience and satisfaction across different media formats, including television, film, digital platforms, and live events.
2. Technology and Innovation: Exploring the role of emerging technologies in enhancing media accessibility. This could involve research on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technological advancements that support the creation of accessible media.
3. Policy and Regulation: Analyzing the impact of existing legislation and regulatory frameworks on media accessibility.
4. Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Encouraging research that draws insights from diverse fields, such as psychology, engineering, design, and social sciences. This approach can lead to innovative methodologies and frameworks to tackle accessibility challenges.
5. Cultural and Linguistic Dimensions: Investigating how media accessibility intersects with cultural and linguistic diversity. Research could explore how different communities perceive and use accessibility features and how these features can be adapted to meet diverse needs.
6. Evaluation and Impact Assessment: Developing metrics and evaluation frameworks to assess the effectiveness of accessibility initiatives in media.

The research group CLiPS (Computational Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics) of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Antwerp is seeking a post-doctoral candidate willing to write a research proposal on the topic of Classification of Online Multimodal Data.

The position is embedded in the Computational Linguistics branch of CLiPS, which focuses on the application of statistical and machine learning methods, trained on corpus data, to explain human language acquisition and processing data, and to develop automatic text analysis systems that are accurate, efficient, and robust enough to be used in practical applications. For this position, we are looking for a candidate to prepare a proposal that focuses on research into innovative and robust methodologies for the classification of online multimodal data. The ultimate goal is to enable a more holistic understanding of communication in the digital world, which can lead to improved insights into social interactions and online communication.

Specifically, this postdoctoral research opportunity focuses on understanding how employees’ career experiences shape their openness to or resistance against organizational change. By combining perspectives from organizational change, career mobility, and diversity research, this project aims to uncover long-term, experiential factors affecting change resistance. The findings will provide actionable insights for organizations to design tailored change management and career development strategies.

External and internal post-doc researchers who are eligible to submit an FWO or MSCA post-doc application are invited to apply. The top ranked candidate(s) with the best profile (project proposal & CV) acquire a preparatory post-doctoral research mandate to further develop and submit a competitive research proposal to FWO (Flemish Science Foundation) or MSCA (Horizon Europe Marie Curie fellowships), with the University of Antwerp as host institution.

Understanding the dynamics of microglia in brain disorders is critical for the future development of therapeutics. Microglia are crucial in shaping brain connectivity, as defects in microglia have been recently linked to neurodevelopmental disorders. In addition, genetics of neurodegeneration place microglia as one of the central drivers of disease. The impact of microglia during the progression of neuropathology is dictated by their subtype composition – as different subsets will lead to different functional outcomes. Microglia transcriptional heterogeneity has been widely studied using transcriptomics approaches, however, the exact microglial subtypes involved in physio and pathophysiological processes remain to be elucidated. By applying spectral flow cytometry and developing a multi-dimensional platform to phenotype microglia, you will aim to identify functional subsets of microglia in the context of neurodevelopment and neuroinflammation.