We are looking for a (junior) post doctoral researcher who will study emerging practices of political speech and representation in late czarist and early soviet Russia, especially by minoritized groups.

Currently, we seem to observe a rise in the polarization of political opinion, accompanied by a hardening of the tone of political discourse and decreased mutual understanding between different ideological ‘bubbles’. Our project, The Sound of Disagreement: Embodied Histories of Political Speech 1800-present, seeks to historicize this (perceived) recent culture war, and to draw attention to the development and co-existence of different modes of disagreement in the past two centuries.

The team will study how different groups of newcomers to political speech (be they women, ethnic minorities, working class activists or populist representatives) navigated the challenges of making themselves heard without being perceived as excessive or intrusive. We analyse how political actors managed disagreement at a practical level, and how embodied and affective experiences of disagreement were shaped. Members of the team will each contribute expertise and empirical insights from their respective case studies to contribute to an over-arching long-term study of the sonic practices of political debate in Europe.

As our expert on ‘special interest’ representation in turn-of-the-century Russia, you will contribute to the project by studying small-scale debating contexts in (post) imperial Russia, and especially focus on how gendered or ethnicized groups gained political audibility in this period. You will design and develop your own case-study, for example by focusing on particular minoritized groups, or forms of representation, in order to shape your contribution to the project, and combine your independent research with collaborative work on the long-term history of political debate together with your colleagues.