The Department of English, Germanic and Romance studies (ENGEROM), University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invites applications for a 30-month post-doctoral researcher position in the history of colonial and post-colonial psychiatry. 

The position is funded by the ERC project ‘Decolonising Madness: Transcultural Psychiatry, International Order and the Birth of a “Global Psyche” in the aftermath of the Second World War’ (DECOLMAD). Starting date: 1 February 2021.

This is an exciting opportunity to join an innovative and inter-disciplinary research project, which aims to explore the emergence and historical development of the discipline of transcultural psychiatry after WWII and in the midst of decolonisation, and to unpick the complex intellectual and logistical relationships between colonialism and post-colonial ‘psy’ disciplines. The project relies on a variety of sources and methodologies to analyse how psychiatrists and anthropologists from all over the world tried to re-define the relationship between culture, race and individual psyche following the end of the Second World War and colonialism.  At the heart of the project is an exploration of the multiple voices – Nigerian, Ugandan, Yugoslav, Sudanese, Colombian, Soviet, Indian, in addition to West European and North American – which took part in these global discussions. Moreover, the project explores how the key discussions in transcultural psychiatry shaped the imagination of clinical encounters between psychiatrists and patients, and aims to recover patients’ voices, experiences and interventions. The project runs from 2020 until 2025, and involves archival and library research and oral interviews in more than 15 countries around the world. It will also offer an exciting opportunity to engage with psychiatric practitioners and contribute to the current debates on global mental health. 

You can read more about the project here: https://decolmad.ku.dk