The Humanitarian Studies Centre has the mission to develop and advance humanitarian studies in the Netherlands and at the international level, with a special focus on promoting research and education in areas in the Global South that are prone to humanitarian crises. Humanitarian studies concerns the study of societies and vulnerable communities experiencing humanitarian crisis originating from disaster, conflict, refugee situations, and/ or political collapse. It studies the causes and impact of crisis; how people, communities and authorities respond to them, including efforts for prevention and preparedness, and how humanitarian action and other external interventions are organized and affect the recovery from crises. The Humanitarian Studies Centre will host two additional institutions: the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) and the Platform for humanitarian knowledge exchange (KUNO). IHSA was founded in 2009, is governed by a board, organized 7 international conferences and has a constituency of more than 2.000 scholars and practitioners. KUNO is a joint initiative of 5 academic institutions and 12 Netherlands-based aid agencies.
Objectives
The Humanitarian Studies Centre has the following objectives:
- To provide a space for academic and applied research, education, international networking, and research uptake and communication.
- To strengthen humanitarian studies in countries regularly beset by crisis, especially through the establishment of humanitarian observatories. Humanitarian observatories are organized spaces where participants representing multiple actors exchange, learn, and seek action and influence in relation to humanitarian governance.
- To initiate activities and strengthen ongoing collaborations in the field of humanitarian studies.
- To disseminate and promote research on humanitarian studies, carried out by HSC’s fellows and partners.
Job description
Senior researcher humanitarian studies with a focus on humanitarian crises related to natural hazard-related disaster and anthropogenic climate change.
The Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC) is a new initiative endowed through a Spinoza Prize awarded to Professor Thea Hilhorst. The Prize was given in recognition of the importance of humanitarian studies as an academic field.
The HSC is looking for an all-round humanitarian studies scholar with a special focus on humanitarian crises related to natural hazard-related disaster and anthropogenic climate change.
The candidate will for the majority of the employment contribute to research, where possible and appropriate to teaching and MA supervision, (max 20% of the employment), and collaborations to advance the study of these topics. This involves the acquisition of academic grants and applied research assignments. Applied research assignment will need to be embedded in and contribute to the academic work and publication record of the centre.
The candidate will work closely with IHSA (https://ihsa.info/Opens external) and KUNO (https://www.kuno-platform.nl/Opens external) to contribute to the global development of humanitarian studies and to advance research uptake and collaborations with practice.
The candidate is expected to work independently and creatively on the basis of annual planning and evaluation cycles.
Job requirements
The successful candidate will have a broad interdisciplinary academic training and experience, with a focus on humanitarian action or a related field, such as disaster studies, conflict studies or development studies.
The candidates’ research base will be the Governance, Law and Social Justice group, which is one of the four groups comprising ISS’s overall focus on Global Development and Social Justice.
