Job Description

In 2025-2026, the Pembroke Center will award residential Postdoctoral Research Associate positions to scholars from any field whose research relates to the theme of "The Civic Work of Monuments." Fellows are required to participate in a weekly research seminar and teach one undergraduate course. Candidates are selected on the basis of their scholarly potential and the relevance of their work to the research theme. Recipients must have a PhD at the start of the fellowship and may not hold a tenured position. Fellowships are awarded to scholars who have received their degrees from institutions other than Brown University within the last five (5) years. The term of appointment is July 1, 2025-June 30, 2026. The annual stipend is approximately $60,000 plus $2,000 for research expenses and an additional one-time $1,000 stipend to assist in the transition to Providence. Postdoctoral Research Associates are eligible to participate in the Brown University health and dental benefit plan.  For full consideration, applications must be submitted by 11:59 pm (EST) on Monday, November 25, 2024.

In 2025-26, Juliet Hooker , Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science and Professor of Political Science at Brown University will lead the Pembroke Research Seminar, "The Civic Work of Monuments."

Public monuments are often sites of struggle for contending visions of the present and future of the body politic because they embody the stories we choose to tell about the national past. The 2025-26 Pembroke Seminar is concerned with the civic work of monuments, the way they speak, and the way in which citizens speak back to them. In this seminar, we will grapple with monuments as forms of "public speech" and "scriptive things": elements of material culture that structure human actions but whose meaning is also contested. Memorialization privileges certain accounts of the past by inscribing them onto the public landscape. But these narratives are not set in stone, as citizens can resist their intended lessons. How do monuments shape political imaginations and civic practices? Whose stories have we told and to what effects? How have citizens experienced, ignored, or contested public commemoration at local and national levels, in universities and other locations? What should we do about oppressive monuments and disparities in public commemoration? How can we reimagine memorialization to tell a more capacious array of stories? What form can/should public monuments take? Drawing on a wide variety of fields and disciplines, from political theory, philosophy, history, art and art history, visual culture, anthropology, etc., as well as the work of artists, philanthropic institutions, activists, and local and national governments, we will explore histories of commemoration and contestation, keeping in mind that public monuments are palimpsest of memory that seek to tell some stories and drown out others. 

See full seminar description on the  Pembroke Center website . 

Candidates are selected on the basis of their scholarly potential and the relevance of their work to the research theme. Recipients must have a PhD and may not hold a tenured position. Fellowships are awarded to scholars who have received their degrees from institutions other than Brown University within the last five (5) years. Postdoctoral Research Associates may come from interdisciplinary fields, the arts, the humanities, social sciences and sciences.

The Pembroke Center is especially interested in qualified candidates who can contribute, through their research, teaching, and/or service, to the diversity and excellence of the academic community.

Complete applications must include:

1. Cover letter
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Writing Sample

As an EEO/AA employer, Brown University provides equal opportunity and prohibits discrimination, harassment and retaliation based upon a person?s race, color, religion, sex, age, national or ethnic origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law, and caste, which is protected by our University policies.

About Brown University

Located in historic Providence, Rhode Island and founded in 1764, Brown University is the seventh-oldest college in the United States. Brown is an independent, coeducational Ivy League institution comprising undergraduate and graduate programs, plus the Alpert Medical School, School of Engineering, School of Public Health, Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership and the IE Brown Executive MBA.

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