News

Postdoctoral Fellow Position in Dept. I, Anthropocene Group (Deadline June 15, 2019)

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Research Cluster "Knowledge in and of the Anthropocene" (Dept. I), is offering a position for a

Postdoctoral Fellow

for two years, starting from October 1, 2019. The position is established in the framework of a cooperation between the MPIWG, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) set up by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW).

The research undertaken by the candidate is supposed to critically assess and engage with the shifting material and epistemic cultures of the geological sciences in light of the Anthropocene concept, both in an historical and in contemporary perspective. It may comprise of one or several of the following areas of study:

  • comparative history of materials and geochemical/biotic signals relevant to defining a stratigraphic marker for the Anthropocene (such as plastics, fly ash, radiogenic isotopes, carbon isotopes, heavy metals, chemical and organic compounds, etc.)
  • history of geochemistry and biogeochemistry
  • recent history of stratigraphy, incl. chemo- and biostratigraphic methods
  • material cultures of the geological sciences
  • epistemic transformations of the geological sciences in the wake of the Anthropocene hypothesis