About The Role
This is a full-time, two-year contract designed to help launch an early career research’s career.
As a member of Swansea University, you will join colleagues conducting world-class research in disability studies and neurodiversity studies across time-periods and disciplines, and in early modern literature. You will hold a fixed term 2 year post on the project AMEND – Early Modern European Neurodivergence. AMEND is a 6-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust that aims to significantly shift the understanding of what we currently call neurodivergence by investigating the analogous concept(s) used by early modern people. Establishing a longer conceptual history of neurodivergence than currently exists, AMEND will nurture neurodivergent people’s agency and wellbeing. The project’s definition of neurodivergence is broad and inclusive and encompasses research into areas such as voice-hearing, addictions, and dementia alongside what might more commonly be thought of as ‘neurodivergent conditions’ such as autism and into the concept of neurodivergence itself. We aim to explore and value the diversity of neurodivergence, and to foreground often marginalised neurodivergent communities such as partially verbal people and neurodivergent people of colour.
You will contribute to the first two years of AMEND, working with the PI and Administrator to achieve the project’s first key goal: ‘to investigate the significance and signification of neurodivergence in early modern Europe, across languages and cultures, remaining attentive to early modern cross-cultural encounters’ (for example, with the Global South). This first strand of the project involves archival research, a conference, and a practice-as-research theatre project.
The project grant provides you with financial support to visit archives and attend conferences as part of your role, and funded training in areas relevant to the project. You will receive regular mentoring from the PI, and the opportunity to have a second or alternative mentor at Swansea.