The Institute of Sociology at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, seeks three post-doctoral researcher (German pay scale E 13TV-G-U, fulltime) in science and technology studies by 1st April 2019 or as soon as possible thereafter (the starting date is negotiable).
Deadline: 22.11.2018
The project:
The project ‘CRYOSOCIETIES’ (“Suspended Life: Exploring Cryopreservation Practices in Contemporary Societies”), led by Thomas Lemke, has received funding in the shape of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 788196). The project explores the crucial role of cryopreservation in affecting temporalities and the concept of life. It is based on the hypothesis that in contemporary societies cryopreservation practices bring into existence a new form of life: “suspended life”. “Suspended life” enables vital processes to be kept in a liminal state in which biological substances are neither fully alive nor dead. CRYOSOCIETIES aims to empirically enrich and theoretically advance our understanding of vitality and the politics of life in the 21st century. It will conduct an ethnographic exploration of how the collection, storing and usage of human and non-human organic material by technologies of freezing and thawing is entangled with social, cultural and moral issues. The project consists of three case studies: investigation of cord blood storage in the Czech Republic, oocyte freezing in Spain and an initiative to cryopreserve endangered or extinct species in Great Britain.
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