The New School seeks applicants for a one-year postdoctoral fellow to join their 2018-19 Sawyer Seminar entitled Imaginative Mobilities supported by the Mellon Foundation. The post- doctoral fellow for The New School Sawyer Seminar will work with a diverse team of scholars including Anthony Dunne (Co-Director of the Designed Realities Lab), Victoria Hattam (Poli- tics), Fiona Raby (Co-Director of the Designed Realities Lab), Miriam Ticktin (Anthropology), and Alex Aleinikoff (University Professor and Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility). The Seminar aims to bring the different traditions of design and the social sciences into dialogue. In doing so, they aim to open up new questions and lines of analysis through a more imaginative engagement with political possibilities of “bordering”. The aim is not to develop ‘design solutions’ but design propositions, useful fictions and hypothetical scenarios in order to facilitate different kinds of conversations across disciplines.
The Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellow will:
- assist with preparation of seminars and workshops
- participate in seminars and workshops
- turn selected ideas generated in workshops into design proposals and visualizations
- help design a project website documenting project outcomes.
Applicants must have:
- an MFA or PhD degree level qualification in design, architecture or a related field
- a portfolio of projects which demonstrate a high degree of aesthetic sophistication and an interest in experimenting with visual language and modes of representation
- experience using 3D Modeling software such as Rhino or similar, as well as 2D packages such as Illustrator (essential) and Photoshop
- the capacity to work at the scale of both objects and environments
- interest in collaboration across design, art, the social sciences and humanities
- the ability to develop project ideas from academic discussions and material
Desirable but not essential:
- experience working with WordPress or similar platforms
- an interest in issues related to migration, mobility and citizenship
Imagined Mobilities: A Sawyer Seminar, 2018-19
Much of the debate on borders – both academically and politically – has revolved around a di- chotomy: whether they should be open, or closed. The Imagined Mobilities seminar will shift the discussion away from the frame of open or closed borders, to re-imagine the meaning and design of borders. Starting with the concepts of mobility and immobility across political spaces, we will attend to different kinds of movement and to the way movement and space are co-constructed. In particular, the seminar will open migration and border studies debates by bringing art and design into conversation with contemporary social research.
With the dual goals of intervening in current debates on borders and serving as a pilot for collab- orative work at the intersection of design and social research, the seminar sessions will follow very different formats over the course of the year. Field trips, invited guests, and design work- shops all will be used reimagine the mobility/ immobility of humans, non-humans, capital, com- modities and things, and the ways they move in relation to one another. Seminar participants will include faculty from across the university as well as advanced graduate students in art and design and the social sciences. The seminar will be supported administratively by the Zolberg Institute for Mobility and Migration.
The University is engaged in a diversity initiative and we encourage individuals from groups un- derrepresented in U.S. higher education to apply. The New School is committed to maintaining a diverse educational and creative community, a policy of equal opportunity in all its activities and programs, including employment.
The deadline for applications is February 1, 2018. The review of the applications will begin im- mediately and will remain open until the position is filled.
Applicants apply online using the faculty application on The New School Human Resources website https://careers.newschool.edu/. Using our online application system, applicants must submit 1) a cover letter summarizing their design experience and motivation for applying to the post, 2) a resume, 3) a portfolio PDF of design work, 4) and names and contact details of three potential reviewers, who have agreed to be contacted by The New School search committee as needed. Please be advised that, if contacted, the reviewers will be requested for recommendation in a timely fashion (within one week). Applicants may be contacted at the discretion of the search committee for additional materials
Information about The New School can be found at: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/
Benefits: Comprehensive University benefits package including health and retirement plans, tu- ition remission.
Visit https://www.newschool.edu/human-resources/benefits/
The New School does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, creed, sex or gender (including gender identity and expression), pregnancy, sexual orientation, religion, religious practices, mental or physical disability, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, veteran status, marital or partnership status, or any other legally protected status.
