Unprecedented and accelerating change characterize the global scene, whether it concerns the climate or the persistent, and growing, inequalities. Even though humankind has never been more prosperous, social and political turmoil challenges humans to build for themselves a better future. Despite these bleak and gloomy prospects, creativity and resilience, and the ability to collaborate, innovate, and design, continue to amaze us.
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology welcomes submissions for a new professorship in social and cultural anthropology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at KU Leuven. KU Leuven represents a leading academic institution in Europe that is the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure. The university’s mission is to provide excellence in academic education and research and to offer a distinguished service to society. Owing to KU Leuven’s cutting-edge research, KU Leuven is a charter member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in Europe.
Within KU Leuven, the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology conducts state of the art anthropological research on questions as varied as urbanity, superdiversity, religion, mobility etc. The research projects are organized around three thematic clusters: making, living and moving around the world (MaLiMo). Our department is committed to long-term ethnographic research to gain an in-depth understanding of how individuals and groups organize their lives, relate to pasts, and prefigure futures; to the highest ethical standards of our discipline; and to Open Science. While several staff members hold a long-standing expertise on Africa, the current appointment of an anthropologist of Asia (any regional specialty) fits in a strategy to expand the regional focus of our department.
Website unit
Duties
Research
You will be expected to develop an international research program aiming at excellent scientific output at an international level and support and promote the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in national and international research collaborations. We aim to broaden the regional expertise of our staff, and therefore invite applicants with a strong and longstanding ethnographic engagement with and expertise on Asia (all regions included). We particularly encourage applicants with an expertise in economic anthropology (e.g. development, inequality, precarity, consumption, production), or urban anthropology (e.g. urbanization, planning, rural-urban migration, urban heritage) to apply. Our department also wants to further its commitment to develop innovative and creative anthropological research methods. Therefore, we prioritize candidates with experience in those domains or willing to develop this in the coming years.
Teaching
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology organizes the Master in Social and Cultural Anthropology in English and Dutch and an Advanced Master in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies (CADES). Your teaching will contain several courses (up to four courses), including introductory and methodological courses in general anthropology at a Bachelor and, mainly, at a Master level, and courses in your theoretical and regional fields of expertise. You supervise students working on their master thesis and PhD students. Your teaching is expected to meet the KU Leuven standards regarding academic program level and orientation and to be in keeping with the educational vision of KU Leuven. Commitment to the quality of education as a whole is expected.
Service
You provide scientific, societal and internal services. This is reflected, among other things, in a constructive contribution to education and research, as part of the department’s collective projects (e.g. through participation in meetings, teacher days, information sessions, recruitment activities, exchange programs; and later on taking on the coordination of the research unit, and other leadership positions such as head of department), and service to the larger academic community (e.g., service to academic associations such as WAU, EASA or AAA, and journals (reviews), education (e.g., participation in program committee meetings), and faculty (e.g., participation in faculty council). Your research also entails a public dimension as you are actively disseminating your research to the wider public and/or are involved in various forms of community engagements in your field and/or outside.
Profile
Applicants hold a Ph.D. degree in Social or Cultural Anthropology or a closely related field in the social sciences and humanities with an evidenced track record in anthropology. We particularly welcome applicants with undergraduate or postgraduate degrees from Asia or from a country from the so-called Global South, to apply. We seek a scholar with a broad theoretical interest and a strong background in ethnographic research methods, whose research both relates to and complements the current research lines in our department. The successful candidate has an excellent research record as evidenced by more than one dimension, e.g., the quality of their PhD research (sample chapters of the dissertation), high-level publications in the important journals of our field (i.e., anthropology journals) and related fields (Asian studies included), research impact (e.g., citations, non-metric indicators, public anthropology), and acquired research funding.
We attach great importance to professional and ethical behavior, an attitude of sharing, mentoring and inclusivity, and collegiality, and will encourage the candidate to collaborate with the members of our department as well as with interdisciplinary research groups and centers within KU Leuven. The candidate has a large international network and is eager to further develop this.
The available position is on the level of assistant professor or associate professor. The more senior applicants are, we expect them to have demonstrated excellent teaching skills (including when teaching for large groups) and excellent leadership skills (e.g., through the (current) supervision of PhD students, academic administration, management of team projects).
The official administrative language used at KU Leuven is Dutch. If you do not speak Dutch (or do not speak it well) at the start of employment, KU Leuven will provide language training to enable you to take part in administrative meetings. Before teaching courses in Dutch or English, you will be given the opportunity to learn Dutch, respectively English, to the required standard.
Offer
We offer full-time employment in an intellectually challenging and international environment. You will work in Leuven, a historic and lively city located in the heart of Belgium, within 20 minutes from Brussels, and less than two hours from Paris, London, and Amsterdam. A residence in Belgium is required for this appointment.
Depending on your experience and qualification, the position will be at one of the levels of the senior academic staff (Tenure Track Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor). Junior researchers are appointed as assistant professor on the tenure track for a period of five years; after this period and a positive evaluation, they are permanently appointed (or tenured) as an associate professor. For professors without substantial other funding (e.g., ERC), a starting grant of 110.000 euro is offered to facilitate scientific onboarding and accelerate research in the first phase. The expected starting date is September 2025.
Immediately upon starting you will be able to independently develop your own line of research, serve as a supervisor of dissertations, and raise your own research funding.
KU Leuven welcomes international scholars and their families and provides practical support with regard to immigration and administration, housing, childcare, learning Dutch, and partner career coaching. You can find more information here: https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/en/academic-staff/index
Interested?
For more information you can contact:
Nadia Fadil, Program Director Social and Cultural Anthropology: nadia.fadil@kuleuven.be
Katrien Pype, Chair Social and Cultural Anthropology: katrien.pype@kuleuven.be
Steven Eggermont, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences: steven.eggermont@kuleuven.be
For problems with online applying, please contact solliciteren@kuleuven.be.
KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, neurodivergence, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status. For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.
