Ghent University is hiring one fully funded PhD researcher as part of the FWO project: Reckoning with Belgium’s colonial past: Towards a better understanding of interconnected (truth) initiatives and their contribution to redress.
The PhD project focuses on better understanding a range of initiatives carried out by grassroots actors and institutions aimed towards redress and repair — understood broadly as material, symbolic, institutional, or relational responses to address colonial harm.
The candidate is expected to select and analyse a set of these initiatives (ideally spanning different actor types) to examine how the actors behind them articulate, negotiate, and pursue redress: What forms of redress and repair do they prioritize? How do they legitimize their initiatives? What tensions arise between different visions of redress and repair? And how do these initiatives interact with, or challenge, other initiatives?
The ideal candidate holds an interdisciplinary background preferably combining social sciences and legal studies, including familiarity with conceptual frameworks and debates on historical (in)justice, redress and repair, epistemic authority and (in)justice, recognition and analysis of change processes, and how they relate to colonial harm. A grounded understanding of Belgium’s colonial history and its enduring consequences that continue to shape contemporary societies (both domestically and in its former colonies) is essential (See below). They have experience with, or are open to using, various relevant empirical research methods.
The researcher will be based at the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. On site presence is expected.
The selected candidate will be offered a position of limited duration as PhD researcher (12 months initially, with 36 months extension upon passing the first-year PhD requirements).
Last application date: Mar 15, 2026 23:59
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