Applications are welcome for 14 full-time PhD studentships on ‘The History of Human Freedom and Dignity in Western Civilisation’, available through a European Commission Innovation Training Network (ITN) collaboration of five universities and nine non-academic partners, of which Professor Karla Pollmann, Head of the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies, is a co-investigator.
The ITN project has two aims: to train early stage researchers and to investigate the philosophical and theological traditions behind the modern Western conception of humans as free, valuable, and dignified beings, and how these traditions developed chronologically and geographically. The network will focus on the reception and assimilation of the theological ideas expounded by the church father Origen from the 3rd-century Alexandria.
Available projects particularly related to Classical & Archaeological Studies are ‘Origen in the Early Medieval Period’ and ‘Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux’.
Applications close on 10 January 2016. For more details of the projects and how to apply, please see the page here: http://itn-humanfreedom.eu