ICAS:MP Call for applications 2025-26 in Bonn bei Max Weber Stiftung

Max Weber Stiftung

The M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies “Metamorphoses of the Political: Comparative Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century” (ICAS: MP), a project under the aegis of the Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office, is seeking to award multiple fellowships for the academic year July 2025– June 2026.

ICAS: MP Call for applications 2025-26

Eligibility to apply

The fellowships are open to applicants of all nationalities. We particularly welcome applicants based at German and Indian academic institutions. Interested scholars from related social sciences and humanities disciplines working on thematic fields relevant to ICAS: MP are invited to apply. The research project must be related to the broader ICAS: MP research agenda; please consult the ICAS: MP website at https://micasmp.hypotheses.org/
Fellowships are for a period of up to 5 months. ICAS: MP will reimburse successful candidates with a stipend up to their salary, but no greater than 3500 € per month.
Fellows must already have a PhD degree and have 3 years of research or teaching experience after their PhD.

Please note that this is a residential writing fellowship based at ICAS: MP, New Delhi. Fellows should work on a topic for which the major part of research is already completed by the beginning of the fellowship. During the fellowship term, longer absences for fieldwork or archival research outside Delhi are not allowed. Applicants are expected to possess fluency in English as well as other languages that are relevant to their research proposal.

Application

The application documents include:
1. Online Application Form (to be filled under the link below)

2. Attachments:
Please upload the following application documents to the application form:

• Application: Single PDF comprising list of publications, project description of 3000 words including description of relevance and fit with ICAS: MP research theme and the framework of the thematic foci applied for and a research schedule for the fellowship period.
• Cover letter: 1 page, outlining research experience and academic qualifications

3. Postdoctoral Fellows should also provide (1) an academic reference letter (the referee should submit this directly to Ms. Sukriti Manocha (), (2) a copy of their PhD. degree, or a letter from their supervisor/department head confirming that they will have completed all requirements for the PhD degree by March 2024.
All materials should be uploaded in the application form by 30.09.2024. Late applications will not be considered.

Research Focus

ICAS: MP is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and has its main location in New Delhi, India, though the research conducted at the centre is not restricted to India and South Asia. It offers fellowships for researchers (Postdoc and Senior) who work on at least one of the following ICAS: MP research themes:

1. Working Group ‘Theory from the South’
ICAS: MP’s new research focus ‘Theory from the South’ functions as an overarching rubric for scholarship that seeks to generate new concepts, principles and norms from traditions, histories, and experiences of southern societies. Philosophy and theory are often presented as a narrative of canonical western European thinkers - from Plato and Aristotle through Hegel and Marx to Foucault and Agamben - and taught as such, even in southern academies. Postcolonial and decolonial scholars have provincialized this overwhelmingly Eurocentric imagination and criticized its universal claims by showing how such theories and philosophies are produced out of local historical contexts and may not seamlessly apply to the world at large. However, much more work needs to be done to go beyond the act of critique and move towards the kind of epistemic justice that actually generates new perspectives. This fellowship seeks to encourage the creative and affirmative task of articulating alternative concepts, principles, norms and frameworks of thought, which, while emerging from different southern locales, have a general if not global purchase.
The fellowship is intended to support new research that takes comparison, translation, multilinguality and trans-contextuality seriously and paves the way to a decolonized theoretical subjectivity. The work must be based on materials drawn from southern practices, philosophies, theories, histories and experiences. However, it is expected that the research will transcend the empirical register and posit a generalisable framework of analysis that has contemporary relevance. The study must also achieve the degree of abstraction and/or generality necessary to be relevant to multiple social science and humanities disciplines. Research that has direct bearing on the theme of ‘hierarchy, inequality and egalitarian practices’