PhD-Candidate-Position
(full employment)
in Educational Sciences
 
 
University of Luxembourg
Research Project CHILD - Children in the Luxembourgian Day Care System
INSIDE-Research Group Early Childhood: Education and Care
Prof. Dr. Michael-Sebastian Honig
 
 
The research project
In Luxembourg, like in all OECD countries, the last years have brought an enormous increase of non-parental care for children before school-age, which led to the formation of a highly heterogeneous market. Against this background, the CHILD-Study investigates the care arrangements of 2 to 4-year-olds from a child-centered view. The project starts from the observation that parents combine diverse day care settings to complex chains of care arrangements which are not only embedded into familial conditions and local structures, but also in their cultural and linguistic milieus. From the vantage point of the children, this complex diversity of care arrangements forms the distinct structures of their everyday realities, which are defined by various horizontal transitions that are actively performed and s.,haped by the children. The project will explore in 12-15 case studies the positioning and the participation of children in different kinds of individual care-arrangements with the methods of participant observation, interviews, family diaries and in following the children on their daily trajectories through different childcare settings. The project combines research on early childhood education and care (ECEC) and welfare/inequality studies with questions of childhood sociology and will show, first, how the diversification of the day care sector forms different (inequal) care realities for children and how this positioning affects their agency and learning opportunities. With that focus on the at once structured and structuring agency of the children, the project will, secondly, highlight how children actively contribute to the institutionalization of the Luxembourgian field of ECEC.
 
Your tasks
We are looking for a PhD-Candidate who will participate in all research tasks of the project. In doing so, she/he will conduct an ethnographic case study (PhD-thesis) which focuses on the question how families of a specific minority group organize their children’s care arrangements and how children practice the crossings between the private and public spheres in which they are positioned as “children of minority background”. 
 
Your Profile
§ Diploma or MA in Educational Sciences, Sociology /Cultural Studies or equivalent
§ basic research experiences or interest in Qualitative Research, preferably in Ethnography, and in Childhood Studies and Early Childhood Education and Care
§ good language competencies in German and English, and proficiency in preferably Portuguese or in Serbian/ Croatian/ Bosnian, Italian or French
 
What we offer
§  3 years full-time employment (40hrs/week),  4th year optional
§  preferable as from 01.02.2013
§  working with an experienced team and in a project with international visibility
§  intense supervision, participation in the faculty’s Doctoral School
 
Candidates are invited to submit full applications in English or German (including letter of motivation, CV, copies of diploma, a writing sample e.g. MA-thesis) online until 21.12.2012.
http://recruitment.uni.lu/en
Ref.: F3R-INS-PFN-12CHIL
 
For further information please contact 
Prof. Dr. Honig, [log in to unmask]

 
 
Sabine Bollig
Diplom-Pädagogin
 
Université du Luxembourg
Unité de Recherche INSIDE
Route de Diekirch
L-7220 Walfderdange
[log in to unmask]
(+352) 46 66 44 9698
 
http://wwwen.uni.lu/recherche/flshase/inside