Postdoctoral position in law or sociology of law, University of Copenhagen

The Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, is seeking applications for a postdoctoral position under the research project ‘Non-Muslim Islam’, which is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark under the Sapere Aude program 2023 and headed by Associate Professor, Jesper Petersen, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen.

The postdoctoral position is available from 1 January 2025 and for the duration of 22 months.

Read more about the ‘Non-Muslim Islam’-project here: Jesper Petersen — Independent Research Fund (dff.dk)

Introduction
The ‘Non-Muslim Islam’ project will investigate how and why non-Muslims produce Islamic discourse – Islam without belief in Allah, so to speak. First, the project will test the hypothesis that non-Muslim Islam is the most well-disseminated interpretation of Islam in Danish media, and it will attempt to train an AI so that this hypothesis can also be tested in other contexts than Danish media, including other countries. Second, the project will investigate the production of non-Muslim Islam in the Danish educational system and the Danish legal system. In this way, the project will empirically substantiate a re-conceptualization of Islam as produced and consumed by both Muslims and non-Muslims, it will challenge previous research results that have not considered non-Muslim Islam as a variable, and as a result it will significantly expand the scope of Islamic studies.

See the research article “The Case for Studying Non-Muslim Islam” for a detailed explanation of non-Muslim Islam.

About the postdoctoral position
The postdoc is responsible for the execution of Work Package 2 entitled ‘The Legal System’ of the ‘Non-Muslim Islam’-project. Together with the PI (Jesper Petersen) the postdoc will test the hypothesis that, despite the use of neutral language, non-Muslim Islam has a significant presence in Danish law. That is, together with the PI, the postdoc will map the progressive reduction in the number of Islamic semiotic resources used when ideas move along the trajectory of media debate to parliamentary debate to committee to preparatory legal work to law proposal to the bill which is passed in parliament. The so-called burka law from 2017 is a good example of this. In Danish media politicians explicitly discussed the niqab, but the bill that was later passed prohibited masking.

Furthermore, the postdoc will investigate how non-Muslim Islam is produced in Danish courts at all levels and in the European Court of Human Rights, the consequences for Muslim citizens, and the epistemological qualifications of these Islam productions. A good example of this can be found in Refah Partisi and Others v. Turkey (2003) in which the European Court of Human Rights stated that sharia is “stable”, “invariable”. However, this contradicts core beliefs within the Islamic legal tradition, and thus, a discrepancy between Muslim sharia and the sharia of the European Court of Human Rights emerged.

Fluency in Danish is a requirement.

Required qualifications
The position requires academic qualifications PhD, JSD or equivalent degree in law or sociology of law. All applicants are expected to be able to use Danish and English as the working language (written and spoken). Successful candidates will demonstrate a clear potential to deliver high quality peer-reviewed research publications.

The postdoc will be required to work interdisciplinary in law and humanities. Knowledge about sharia, Islamic studies, history of religions, and discourse theory are an advantage but not a requirement. In the overall assessment, emphasis will be placed on the applicant’s research and teaching potential. Special emphasis will be placed on the applicant’s ambition to work with and develop the concept non-Muslim Islam within law.

Salary and terms of employment
The appointment is temporary and will be made in accordance with the agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (Akademikernes Centralorganisation, AC). In addition to the basic salary, you will receive an annual supplement per month and a total contribution to your pension fund equal 17.1 % of your salary and annual supplement is paid. It is possible to negotiate further salary supplements. 

Application
Letter of motivation, appendices and the submitted research publications (including papers, articles and books) may be written in English or Danish. 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.

The application must include the following nine (9) elements:

1. Letter of motivation (a one-page document explaining the reasons for applying)
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Research outline. Applications should outline how they intend to investigate the two research areas described in the “about the position” section above. Outlines should be no more than two pages and demonstrate the capacity carry out research at a postdoctoral level, identifying the relevant methodological tools.
4. Diplomas, PhD or JSD diploma or alternatively a document showing that the applicant submitted or will submit a dissertation .
5. Publication list (complete, numbered list of publications)
6. Teaching portfolio, including documentation for teaching qualifications as well as a brief statement of the applicant's teaching visions within the research area. For more information regarding the teaching portfolio, please see the related guidelines.
7. Academic references, if available (please upload under “other relevant material”).
8. A maximum of five (5) scientific publications that the applicant wishes to have included in the assessment, of which no more than one (1) may be a monograph. Applicants, who have written a PhD or JSD thesis or equivalent, must always submit the complete thesis (if the thesis is written in Danish, English, Swedish or Norwegian) and the written assessment of the thesis as a part of submitted publications.
9. If citing work where the applicant has been a co-author, a co-author declaration, which addresses the applicant's share of these works, must be submitted. Material that has not yet been published can be submitted. However, please indicate if this is the case.

In addition to the material which the applicant wishes to be included in the assessment, the assessment committee may require further material to assess the applicant. It is the applicant’s responsibility to provide such supplementary material, should this be requested.

Application procedure
Upload letter of motivation, appendices and the research publications electronically using the link below. We advise you to have the above mentioned documents ready before you begin to fill out your online application, and it is essential that all required documents are enclosed.

Applications must be addressed to the Associate Dean of Research and uploaded electronically.

An automatically generated message is sent out acknowledging receipt of the uploaded application.

Applicants will be kept informed about the process of the application procedure on a regular basis via email.

Following the application deadline, the Associate Dean of Research selects applicants for assessment on the advice of the appointments aommittee. Applicants are selected on the basis of an overall assessment of the applicants that best match the recruitment needs of the Faculty as described in this advertisement for the post. This is compared with the applicant's research and teaching profile as set out in the application, CV incl. list of publication, teaching portfolio and any research/development plan.  All applicants are then immediately notified whether their application has been passed for assessment by an expert assessment committee. Selected applicants are notified of the composition of the committee and when the committee has completed its assessment, each applicant has the opportunity to comment on the part of the assessment that relates to the applicants themselves.

University of Copenhagen wishes to reflect the surrounding society and therefore encourages all interested parties regardless of personal background to apply for the position.

Contact
Questions about the Non-Muslim Islam project project may be addressed to Jesper Petersen, e-mail: jesper.petersen@teol.ku.dk.

Further information about the recruitment process is available from HR, e-mail: hrsc@hrsc.ku.dk. Please refer to ID number 211-1904/24-2I #1.

The application deadline is 6 October 2024 at 23:59 GMT+1.

Applications received after the deadline has expired will not be accepted.

If your application does not include all the required supporting documents your application can be rejected and not be considered by the assessment committee.

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The Faculty of Law is one of six faculties at the University of Copenhagen. The Faculty carries out research, education and knowledge dissemination within the area of law. Research is partly organized in research centres and groups with focus on thematic areas of interest. The Faculty employs about 80 full time researchers and approx. 50 PhD students as well as approx. 70 administrative staff members. In addition, approx. 450 part-time lecturers teach on the legal programmes on which approx. 4,500 students are enrolled. See the Faculty website: https://jura.ku.dk/english for more information.