Position description

In the fall of 2020, with the generous support of the John L. Nau Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Virginia’s Democracy Initiative and College of Arts & Sciences launched a multiyear faculty hiring project. Over four years, we will hire a dozen or more new faculty members at all ranks in the departments of Classics, History, and Philosophy, Politics, and elsewhere. Across all the searches, the Departments seek to appoint scholars whose primary research is focused on the study of the principles of democracy, democratic accountability and representation, either to advance the work of the core lab on the history and principles of democracy or to contribute to one of the Initiative’s other projects.

This year, with the support of the John L. Nau Foundation, the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia invites applications for Full Professor position on the study of democracy. Our understanding of democracy is a capacious one that considers questions of citizenship, culture and the arts, civic practice, economics, environment, health and medicine, media and communication, political and legal institutions, religion, social mobility, and many other topics. Candidates can be working in a variety of scholarly fields within the Arts, Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences, including cross-disciplinary, interstitial and emerging areas of study, and focus on any historical period and any geographical area. We are open to a wide range of methodologies: applicants may pursue artistic, cultural, ethnographic, historical, institutional, linguistic, literary, philosophical, political, sociological, theoretical or other approaches to deepening our understanding of democracy. We particularly seek a scholar whose work connects broadly across disciplines and seek to actively participate in the project of the Democracy Initiative and its intertwined missions of teaching, research, and public engagement.

Democracy Initiative

The mission of the Democracy Initiative is to promote excellence in research, teaching, and public engagement on democracy at a global scale by bringing together a diverse range of scholars, government leaders, and practitioners to study and advance the prospects of democracy around the world. The Democracy Initiative is interdisciplinary and supports and advances the work of faculty, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, in the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences. To that end, the Initiative supports a variety of labs built on models of collaborative work. The Democracy Labs consist of a series of three-year, rotating labs on various topics, connected by the work of the John Nau III History and Principles of Democracy Lab (the Nau Core Lab), an interdisciplinary hub of research, teaching, and outreach. Current rotating labs are focused on corruption and the rule of law, democracy and new media, democratic statecraft, the links between environmental and racial inequality, and race, religion, and democracy. The Democracy Initiative also supports two projects focused on community engagement and research, the Memory Project and The Equity Center. In addition to holding appointments in their home departments, each new faculty member hired under this initiative will also be a member either of the Nau Core lab or one of the Initiative’s other research labs or projects.

Key Responsibilities
Teaching

• Contribute to both the home department or program and the Democracy Initiative.

Research

• Contribute to disciplines and areas of focus.

Democracy Initiative

• Contribute through teaching, leading working groups or research projects, and/or public and community engagement projects.

Candidate Profile

Applicants should have the qualifications necessary for appointment at the rank of Full Professor within their discipline. The appointment will be made in the most appropriate department or program from those participating in the search (listed below) and joint appointments are possible.

• American Studies
• Anthropology
• Art
• Classics
• Economics
• English
• French
• German
• Global Studies
• History
• Media Studies
• Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures
• Philosophy
• Politics
• Religious Studies
• Sociology
• Spanish
• Theatre and Performance Studies
• Women, Gender, and Sexuality