Postdoctoral Fellowship: A Connected History of the Middle Ages

Applications are open from June 15 2025 to October 15 2025 for one
postdoctoral fellowship associated with the FAPESP Thematic Project 2021/02912-3 A
Connected History of the Middle Ages. Communication and Circulation from the
Mediterranean. The selected postdoctoral fellow will be based at the Faculty of Philosophy,
Literature and Human Sciences at University of São Paulo (USP), supervised by
Professor Marcelo Cândido da Silva, associated with the Space and Communities
axis of the Thematic Project. This axis focuses on welcoming, promoting and
articulating a set of individual research projects within the Thematic Project’s
framework. The contract will initially be for a duration of 24 months, with the possibility of
extension at FAPESP’s discretion.

Space Circulation

The Thematic Project includes two additional axes: Space and Circulation and
Communication and Circulation. In line with the general objectives of the project,
the fellow’s research should address topics also spanning these other axes.
The Space and circulation axis of the project proposes interrogating the
problem of creation and memory from the point of view of “artistic”, “artisanal” and
“popular” know-how, in its various expressions and contexts. The aim is to inspect the
various forms of creation from the following points of view: 1) of subjects (human and
non-human) and materials; 2) from the angle of techniques and instruments, which are
themselves created according to diverse agencies; 3) from the point of view of learning
and training processes, and the various spaces in which they take place. The set of
research projects encompassed by this axis will also attempt to follow the divergent
destinies of the things created (practical purposes, ritual uses, political uses, etc.),
paying attention to the transformations that the creations undergo along the way like the
conversion of the “artefact” into “art”, for example. The examination of artisanal
creations will also reflect on the mediations and mixtures that link things and people,
devices, procedures and materialities. Such creative ‘contaminations’ will be analyzed
considering how they led to processes of differentiation and metamorphosis, flows and
processes. Based on the research problems mentioned above, this axis will be concerned
with the integration of Mediterranean space through the circulation of objects.

Communication and Circulation

The research linked to the Communication and circulation axis will be
articulated with the other two axes of the project. Thus, the concepts of “communication
and circulation” make it possible to address issues related to: the construction of
memory and historiography; the circulation of people, texts and ideas; the transfer of
images and objects; political and social communication networks; commercial
exchanges and goods; the construction of concepts and knowledge; the use and
circulation of forms and representations of established powers and resistances to them;
cultural, social and political exchanges in different geographical spaces, whether in
continuous or discontinuous times.