Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Legal Humanities, 2020-22

The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, seeks to hire two Post-Doctoral Fellows for two-year appointments to begin Fall 2020.

Legal humanities examines how the law, society, culture, politics, and economy are mutually constituted. It thus draws from a range of methodologies, including those dealing with representation (e.g., literary, cultural, and performance studies), history, and sociological perspectives. Legal humanities understands the law as both reflecting and actively influencing societal values, aspirations, anxieties, biases, and notions of justice, examining how law constitutes and shapes the social world in which it is embedded.

The Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellows in Legal Humanities will spend their two-year terms in residence at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and will participate in all activities of the IPRH-Mellon Legal Humanities Research Group. Fellows will pursue an individual research project in an area of the legal humanities; participate in a seminar and programs focused on the methods and challenges of interdisciplinary work in the legal humanities; work together on a collaborative, public-facing project in the field; and work with the research group to develop a legal humanities curriculum. Each fellow will be required to teach one of the courses developed in the second year of the fellowship term.

The search is open to scholars in all humanities disciplines, including the humanities-inflected social sciences, whose research and teaching interests lie in the area of legal humanities. Special consideration will be given to scholars whose scholarship centers social justice, community engagement, and activist organizing. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to racial, im/migrant, and/or gender justice; human rights; housing and built environments; environmental justice; Indigenous sovereignty; anti-imperial resistance; and similar issues.

The fellowship carries a $58,350 annual stipend, a $5,000 research account, a moving allowance, and a comprehensive benefits package. To be eligible, applicants should have received their Ph.D. in a humanities discipline between January 1, 2017 and no later than July 31, 2020.

Application Deadline: October 21, 2019

 Detailed eligibility requirements and application guidelines can be found at http://go.illinois.edu/postdoc. The University of Illinois conducts criminal background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. 

Applications must be submitted through the online application system. The submission period opens September 1, 2019.

Questions about these fellowships may be addressed to Dr. Nancy Castro, Deputy Director of IPRH, at ncastro@illinois.edu or (217) 244-7913.