Interdisciplinary PhD Scholarship Transnational Catholicism and Decolonization

The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and the Faculty of Arts offer a four year scholarship to complete a PhD within a joint interdisciplinary project led by Prof. Todd Weir and Prof. Clemens Six. The proposed PhD research plan will be embedded in the department of Christianity and the History of Ideas at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and the department of History at the Faculty of Arts.

This PhD project is located at the crossroads of the religious history of global Christianity (Todd Weir) and the political and intellectual history of decolonization (Clemens Six). The goal of this project is twofold: to understand the impact of the decline of European empires on the Catholic Church and Catholic communities in the Global South; and to understand how the Church and Catholic affiliations shaped the re-ordering of state and society during that era.

The recent opening of the Vatican archives for the pontificate of Pius XII (1939 to 1958) allows for a new history to be written about the response of the Vatican to the post World War II decolonization of much of the Global South. This PhD project will examine transnational relations between Catholic missions and the Vatican.

We invite proposals for PhD projects that ideally focus on two case studies. In each, the candidate will examine and compare how the local and national Church re-positioned itself in view of competing actors, including majoritarian religious movements, secularist movements, such as communism, as well as colonial and state officials. Attention may be given to both discoursive and organizational developments. The approach will follow a collaborative project of both supervisors on "apologetics" as a method of modeling and comparing secular-religious conflicts in global history. Proposals may undertake a triangular examination of two case studies and the Vatican, and thus include mention of potential colonial and mission archives and the Vatican archives.

The application deadline is 19 July 2021, and the preffered starting date is 1 October 2021.

For more information and how to apply, see the vacany.