PhD position in the history of disability in a Dutch and an international context

The Department of Art & Culture, History, and Antiquity (AHA) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is offering a paid position for a PhD student to study the international impact and the extensive transnational networks of the

community, a model inclusive neighbourhood established in the 1960s near the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands. The expected starting date is 1 September 2022.

The position is part of the Dutch Research Foundation (NWO) Open Competition in the Humanities research project Disability and Self-Governance: a Global Microhistory of Het Dorp Community and its Cultural Heritage from the 1960s. Apart from this advertised PhD position, the project contains a sub-project on the microhistory of Het Dorp community at the PhD level and a part-time postdoc project on the public history of Het Dorp and its cultural heritage.

Topic
How can engagement with the concept of disability contribute to writing more inclusive histories? The project adopts this concept as its central analytical category for undertaking the first comprehensive historical study of Het Dorp - a self-governing, accessible residential community for people with severe physical disabilities and chronic illness near Arnhem which was initiated in 1962 by the largest telethon in Dutch history. Employing the methodologies of global microhistory and participatory heritagization the research project reconstructs the (micro) history of Het Dorp in the context of societal exclusion & inclusion, accessible living and the changing role of the welfare state in providing for vulnerable groups in the Netherlands and globally. It also generates new insights into postwar global history by illuminating Het Dorp's hitherto unrecognized impact as a model inclusive community in several countries across the word, including Japan, Austria, and Hungary. It adopts a public history perspective and with the active participation of Het Dorp's community members it integrates its societal, cultural and architectural legacy into the field of heritage and memory studies.

The advertised PhD position
This PhD project will undertake a historical study of Het Dorp as a space of international encounters and knowledge exchange against the backdrop of global developments since the 1960s: the different stages of the Cold War, the expansion and the retreat of the welfare state, the changing attitudes towards disabled people, the advances of the disability movement, technological and architectural innovations. Based on archival material drawn both from Het Dorp and from international archives it will reconstruct Het Dorp's extensive networks which crossed ideological divides. Moreover, it will illuminate its role as a facilitator of expert collaboration, for example around the issues of independent living, rehabilitation, recreation and disability advocacy.

The PhD supervisors will be Monika Baár (VU) and Paul van Trigt (Leiden), an additional supervisor may also be appointed.

Your duties

• conduct research on the project's topic, resulting in a PhD dissertation and at one journal publication and one chapter in an edited volume
• participate in the research activities of AHA
• participate in the research activities of the research group (and related national and international events)
• participate in teaching activities of AHA (max. 10% of your time)
• participate in the VU PhD training program and the training program of a relevant national research school, for example the Research School for Social and Economic History, the N.W. Posthumus Institute