The Faculty of Arts has awarded three postdoctoral fellowships for 2009-2010, all of which are for 12-month terms beginning Sept. 1, 2009. The postdoctoral fellowships (internally funded) program supports promising new scholars in the social sciences and humanities to develop their research profile at an important time in their academic careers.

In addition to developing their research profile, postdoctoral fellows are expected to contribute to the university educational enterprise by working with graduate students, by contributing guest lectures for graduate courses and by giving at least one seminar presentation during this tenure.

Although the research profiles of all the fellows vary, it is notable, according to Dr. Frederick White, associate dean of graduate studies, research, in the Faculty of Arts, that the successful applicants are all involved in inter-collaborative, multi-disciplinary research.

“What we are seeing in terms of our postdoctoral applications over the last two years is reflective of an overall trend supported by SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) toward multidisciplinary research,” says Dr. White. “Applicants are looking for research opportunities that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and they often want to benefit from the expertise of professors in two or more departments.”

The Faculty of Arts 2009-2010 fellows are:

• Rebecca L. Graff-McRea completed her PhD in the School of Politics at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her thesis, which centred on the politics of historical commemoration in Ireland, was nominated by the European Consortium for Political Research’s Jean Blondel Thesis Prize and was published in 2007 as part of an edited volume by the Royal Irish Academic Press. Dr. Graff-McRea intends to continue her interdisciplinary approach to studying Irish history through associations with both the English and History Department She considers Memorial University, with its cultural and historical links to Ireland, to be an ideal environment to undertake the initial research for her postdoctoral research project: Troubling Memory: Disrupting the Political of History and Memory in Ireland Through Film and Fiction.
• Royce Koop recently received his PhD from the University of British Columbia. His dissertation, Multi-Level Party Politics: The Liberal Party from the Ground Up, examines the linkages that exist between Canada’s national and provincial Liberal parties. In his postdoctoral research project, Representation and Local Party Organization: Canadian Members of Parliament and their Constituency Associations, Dr. Koop intends to examine the relationships between MPs and their constituency associations and what consequences these relationships have for our overall understanding of political parties and representation in Canada.
• Inna Tigountsova has published in the areas of Russian literature and culture since 2005 when she received her PhD at the University of Toronto. With a strong interest in aesthetics and visual arts, Dr. Tigountsova’s postdoctoral project is titled Curse of the Beast? The Attraction of Ugliness in the Works of Fedor Dostoevsky and Leonid Andreev and focuses on the Silver Age of Russian literature (1880-1928). In addition to literary analysis, Dr. Tigountsova is interested in the cultural significance of the concept of the ugly for 20th and 21st century Russia and whether it can be traced back to the works of Dostoevsky. With her work she is also examining the connections between social alienation and ugliness and the relationship between the visual and the verbal.

The Faculty of Arts is also partnering with the Labrador Institute on the first postdoctoral fellowship in Labrador. Dr. Johanna Wolf’s fellowship begins in September 2010.  See http://today.mun.ca/news.php?news_id=4535 for further details.