The Department of English, Germanic and Romance studies (ENGEROM), University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invites applications for one PhD scholarship (focus on history and/or literature, and mental health), starting on 1 April 2022.

The position is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation project ‘Covid-19 and global mental health: The importance of cultural contexts.’

The successful candidates will work closely with the project’s PI Ana Antic and will join a dynamic international research team, based at ENGEROM.

Description of the project

This project will explore critically the emerging literature and debates about global mental health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and related social isolation and economic downturn. It will examine how cultural and social difference is constructed and worked into the current mental health research. The purpose of the project is twofold. Firstly, it aims to explore the emerging Covid-19 mental health literature (psychiatric, psychological and anthropological) and patients’ narratives in different cultural contexts in order to look beyond the discourses of universality that dominate current research, and to see how different societies have experienced the pandemic/lockdown psychologically, and what is highlighted and diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) as the core problem in different socio-cultural settings. Secondly, it will analyse critically the methodology and research instruments used in the existing mental health studies as well as the assumed universality of their diagnostic concepts. The project rests on the idea that psychiatric treatment results and health outcomes would have more impact if the medical perspective in psychiatry is complemented by a scholarly consideration of local, social, cultural and political-economic factors, which shape the lived experience of and social/communal responses to mental illness.

Detailed information about the project, qualifications, and application procedure can be found here.

The deadline for applications is 9 January 2022, at 23:59 CET.