Prof. Gaoheng Zhang is looking to hire a FHIS doctoral student to help him organize a series of workshops in 2018 with funding from the Faculty of Arts Workshop & Visiting Speaker Grant. The student will work with him to organize 4 workshops and other stand-alone events about “Mobilities and Immobilities” in January, March, September, and November 2018.
Issues of mobilities and immobilities touch upon most aspects of our social and cultural lives, ranging from the transnational flow of capital and information to travel for academic and business conferences. Although the mobilities paradigm has benefited from mature studies of migration, diaspora, transnationalism, colonialism, and networks, it more consciously highlights the centrality of movement (and stasis) in the spatial and temporal coordinates of global issues such as citizenship, belonging, and pluralism. In this way, the mobilities paradigm impels us to debate about the changing technologies and meanings of transportation and communication. The paradigm also helps unpack the power relations of nation-states and transnational organizations within the contexts of the mobilities of human beings and the objects and ideas they bring and create. As such, the workshops’ main purpose is to engage with the attention to movements of multiple kinds at multiple scales in cultural, media, and literary studies of the circulation of humans, objects, ideas, and images. These workshops will attempt to make conscious connections between interpretive approaches and empirical tools by assembling an interdisciplinary group of UBC scholars already working on issues related to mobilities. Eventually we hope to create a UBC research cluster on mobility studies.
Specific duties may include the following: compile a list of UBC scholars working on mobilities and communicate with them about joining the workshops; manage the logistics of the 4 workshops; coordinate with internal and external speakers; promote and disseminate these events; find and distribute reading materials in preparation for the workshops; write summative minutes of each event; publish research results in a format that’s accessible to the general public on https://mobilitiesitalychina.wordpress.com/.
This will be a good opportunity for the student to develop networking and writing skills for academia and other research-oriented jobs in governmental and non-profit organizations.
The pay will be $648 in total: 24 Hours X $27/Hour, inclusive of applicable benefits.
To apply, please send by email (gaoheng.zhang@ubc.ca) by November 3, 2017:
1) a paragraph or two in which you explain your motivations and qualifications to work on this project;
2) a sample of your best writing, such as a term paper or a blog entry
There will be a short face-to-face interview with the finalists in the week of November 6.
