Applications for 2025-26 Pembroke Center Postdoctoral Research Fellowships are open. 

For the 2025-26 academic year, the Pembroke Center is awarding one-year residential postdoctoral research fellow positions to scholars from any field whose research relates to the theme of the seminar, "The Civic Work of Monuments." 

Public monuments are often sites of struggle for contending visions of the present and future of the body politic because they embody the stories we choose to tell about the national past. The 2025-26 Pembroke Seminar is concerned with the civic work of monuments, the way they speak, and the way in which citizens speak back to them. In this seminar, we will grapple with monuments as forms of “public speech” and “scriptive things”: elements of material culture that structure human actions but whose meaning is also contested. Memorialization privileges certain accounts of the past by inscribing them onto the public landscape. But these narratives are not set in stone, as citizens can resist their intended lessons. How do monuments shape political imaginations and civic practices? Whose stories have we told and to what effects? How have citizens experienced, ignored, or contested public commemoration at local and national levels, in universities and other locations? What should we do about oppressive monuments and disparities in public commemoration? How can we reimagine memorialization to tell a more capacious array of stories? What form can/should public monuments take? Drawing on a wide variety of fields and disciplines, from political theory, philosophy, history, art and art history, visual culture, anthropology, etc., as well as the work of artists, philanthropic institutions, activists, and local and national governments, we will explore histories of commemoration and contestation, keeping in mind that public monuments are palimpsest of memory that seek to tell some stories and drown out others. 

Fellows are required to participate weekly in the Pembroke Seminar, teach one undergraduate course, and pursue individual research.

Candidates are selected on the basis of their scholarly potential and the relevance of their work to the research theme. Recipients must have a PhD and may not hold a tenured position. Fellowships are awarded to postdoctoral scholars who have received their degrees from institutions other than Brown within the last five (5) years. Brown University is an EEO/AA employer. The Center strongly encourages underrepresented minority and international scholars to apply.

The term of appointment is July 1, 2025-June 30, 2026. Postdoctoral Research Fellows are eligible to participate in the Brown University health and dental benefit plan. Salary for the position is approximately $56,000.00 For full consideration, applications must be submitted by 11:59 pm (EST) on Monday, November 25, 2024. Selections will be announced in February. Applications should be submitted via Interfolio. 

Questions should be directed to Donna_Goodnow@brown.edu or phone 401-863-2643.

Complete applications must include:

• Curriculum vitae
• Cover letter
  The letter should demonstrate how your research project relates to the Pembroke Seminar theme, and include a proposed course description.
• Writing Sample
  Please send a piece no longer than 7,000 words (equivalent to 28-double spaced pages with 1" margins and a 12 point font). If the sample is part of a larger work, situate it briefly in a cover page.

Selected finalists will be asked to submit additional materials including:

• One page document including title and 250-word abstract of proposed research project
• Project statement of five typed pages (double-spaced)
• Brief representative bibliography for research proposal
• Three confidential recommendation letters
• Course syllabus with a course description and schedule of assigned readings

2024-25 Postdoctoral Fellows   Past Postdoctoral Fellows