Doctoral fellow - Department of History

Organisation/Company Ghent University Research Field Environmental science » Ecology Environmental science » Other History » Archaeology History » History of science History » Modern history Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 31 Mar 2026 - 21:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Horizon Europe - ERC Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Department LW03 - Department of History

Occupancy rate 100%

Vacancy type Research staff

ABOUT GHENT UNIVERSITY

Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15,000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.

With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.

The Department of History at Ghent University is looking for three PhD students (four years) to do interdisciplinary research on biodiversity in Northern Europe during the Late Middle Ages (15-16th centuries) as part of the ERC research team ECOLENT.
The ERC-funded project Ecological Entanglements and Biodiversity in Late Medieval Northern Europe,  (ECOLENT) develops a new conceptual-methodological framework to study biodiversity in a historical context. It will do so by using the late medieval Hanseatic League as a case study. This merchant association bought food products and raw materials in Scandinavia and the Baltic, and exchanged them for manufactured goods in the urbanised Low Countries and England.

In this way, they created both economic and ecological connections between different regions of Northern Europe.
The main focus of the project is not human activities as such, but rather how biotic communities responded to anthropogenic pressures. More specifically, the project studies the impact of the socio-economic pressures generated by the Hanseatic trade network on animal and plant diversity in six regions (the county of Flanders, the duchy of Guelders, the duchy of Schleswig, the duchies of Brunswick-Lüneburg, East Prussia, and Kraków Voivodeship) from 1400 to 1600 by using both historical and archaeological sources.
The project engages with current debates in ecological conservation, such as the use of historical baselines to set conservation goals and the importance of human activities to maintain biodiversity. It also considers ecological questions about adaptation and fundamental versus realized niches. The successful candidate is encouraged to actively disseminate the research results and communicate them to different stake-holders in and outside academia.

• Studying biodiversity in one of the six regions mentioned above. This means identifying wild animals and plants in printed sources (medieval financial accounts, early botanical works etc.), archaeological reports, and unpublished archival handwritten sources in various archives, libraries and (digital) archives.
• The exact scope of the research will be determined jointly by the PhD Candidate and the project’s principal investigator.
• Doing research abroad (the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and/or Poland; depending on the region selected for research) for longer periods of time. Main place of employment is Ghent University, History Department, Campus Ufo, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
• Analysing data on wild fauna and flora in their proper ecological and historical context.
• Publishing the research results in international peer reviewed journals, single-authored and/or co-authored with other members of the ECOLENT team (the principal investigator, a postdoctoral researcher and two PhD students).
• Contribute to setting up an international research network on the history of biodiversity during the medieval and early modern period.
• Help disseminate the…