Postdoctoral position in Mapping, Investigating, and Evaluating Mercenarism via a Human Rights Lens at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen!
The Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, is seeking applications for one postdoc position. The position is part of the ERC project ‘Mercenarism and the Accountability Void: Finding routes to accountability and remedy for the victims of human rights abuses perpetrated by mercenaries’ (MERCURY).
The position is available from 1 September 2024, or as soon as possible thereafter, for the duration of 30 months (2.5 years)
About the MERCURY project
The MERCURY project is a 5-year €2M project led by Dr. Sorcha MacLeod and funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant that will offer pioneering scholarly insights into routes to accountability and remedy for the victims of mercenarism.
About the position
In order to understand the new ways in which contemporary mercenaries are shaped and operate, mapping, investigating, and evaluating is essential. The primary responsibility of the successful candidate will be to undertake cutting-edge research to map contemporary mercenarism operations, including logistics, finances, weapons, personnel, and equipment transfers and to develop a database. This data will be foundational in helping the MERCURY team to understand the new trends and patterns associated with contemporary mercenary, and in turn enable an informed analysis of legal frameworks and routes to accountability. The key research question for the successful applicant is ‘to what extent have contemporary manifestations of mercenaries and mercenary-related actors shifted and changed in their nature and operations, and what are the resulting impacts on the victims of their human rights and IHL violations?’ The applicants should submit a project proposal outlining how they will approach this research question.
Essential requirements for the position:
- A PhD in law or relevant related subject such as social science or data science.
Highly desirable qualifications:
- Experience in human rights investigations, fieldwork, and data-analysis.
- Knowledge of non-state actors, in particular mercenaries and private military and security companies.
- Additional language skills in e.g. French, Arabic, Russian, or Spanish.
- Familiarity with the Russian data environment.
- Experience of database creation (e.g. advanced use of Excel, Palantir systems, Microsoft Azure, or other database platforms, or ability to code in Python).
Application
Letter of motivation, appendices and the submitted research publications (including papers, articles and books), must be written in English. The application will be rejected if not all the required documents are submitted.
It is essential that you fill out all the mandatory fields in the electronic application even though the info is already stated in your CV, application, publication or other material you may find relevant to upload. The completed fields will be screened during the shortlisting and assessment process and in order to generate your final assessment, which we will send to you after the assessment work is finalized.
For more details, refer here
