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19.07.24

Pre-announcement: New Doctoral Researcher Positions RTG „Fixing Futures“

Dear colleagues,

the DFG research training group (RTG) „Fixing Futures“ will offer 8 doctoral researcher
positions (E13, 75 %, 4 years) at Goethe University in Frankfurt, starting May 1, 2025. The
official call for applications will be published on October 23, 2024.

In order to help interested candidates to prepare and plan their application in advance, we
would like to draw your attention to the upcoming call for applications. Further information
on the call for applications will be published on the RTG website in October 2024
(https://fixingfutures.eu/).

The mission of the RTG „Fixing Futures“ is to investigate ‘technologies of anticipation‘ – that
is, socio-material orderings and temporal orientations that have the capacity to define entire
domains of knowledge, forms of social organisation, or even societies as a whole. Tied to a
politics of temporality and affect, technologies of anticipation not only aim to identify and
imagine future trajectories, but also arrange or accommodate what is yet to come.

The RTG explores how such technologies are organised, materialised, mobilised, and – equally
important – how they are criticised and contested. It further attends to the power asymmetries
and operational tensions involved in the enactment of anticipatory practices to inquire what
forms of life are to be protected, enhanced, or saved (and which are excluded, marginalised, or
destroyed).

The RTG approaches these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Building on recent
scholarship in STS, it seeks both to inform societal debates with robust research-driven
knowledge and to contribute to scientific discussions on future-making in human geography,
cultural anthropology and sociology.

As part of the application, we expect a proposal of max. 2000 words plus references, outlining
an idea for a PhD project related to the research aims of the RTG (for more extensive
information on the research programme and the qualification programme see
https://fixingfutures.eu/).

– The application deadline for the doctoral researcher positions will be November
25, 2024.
– The interviews are scheduled for January 14, 2025 and January 15, 2025. We
expect to send out acceptance letters shortly after the interviews.

For further information please contact Prof. Dr. Thomas Lemke (lemke@em.uni-frankfurt.de).

Best regards on behalf of the entire team,
Thomas Lemke

Instructions for application: published soon

Application form: published soon