Le CNRS lance un appel à candidatures pour un poste de post-doctorant(e) de deux ans sur la thématique « Savoirs sur l’enfance et la jeunesse irrégulières (XIX^e-XX^e siècles) ». La personne recrutée travaillera sur la construction des savoirs concernant l’enfance et la jeunesse jugées « irrégulières » à l’époque contemporaine. Il s’agira d’interroger les savoirs constitués en expertises relatives à l’enfance et la jeunesse délinquantes, déviantes, vulnérables, dangereuses, victimes, mauvaises, innocentes, vicieuses, débiles, perverses, inadaptées, inéducables, caractérielles, abandonnées, des années 1820 aux années 1980, qu’il s’agisse de savoirs médicaux et psychiatriques, psychologiques, criminologiques et sociologiques.

General information

• Type of Contract : FTC Scientist
• Contract Period : 24 months
• Expected date of employment : 11 December 2023
• Proportion of work : Full time
• Remuneration : from 2 905,76€ to 4 081,77€
• Desired level of education : Niveau 8 - (Doctorat)
• Experience required : 1 to 4 years
• Section(s) CN : Modern and contemporary worlds

Application

Applications should be sent before 29/11

via the CNRS Employment portal.

Missions

The CNRS is inviting applications for a two-year post-doctoral position on the theme of "Knowledge on irregular childhood and youth (19th-20th centuries)".

The aim of this post is to give a young researcher, who has been holding a PhD for less than three years at the time of taking up the post, significant experience of working in a research unit.

The post-doctoral researcher will carry out her/his research within Axis 1 of the UMR TEMOS scientific policy 'Childhood, gender and traces of the self: individualities and subjectivities in movement', one of whose coordinators is David Niget. The research will be carried out in support of the scientific project of the Junior Professorship (CPJ) Child Studies, held by Véronique Blanchard, whose main subject is the history of irregular childhood in La Réunion.

The recruited researcher will work on the construction of knowledge concerning children and young people deemed 'irregular' in contemporary times. The aim will be to examine the knowledge built up in expert reports on delinquent, deviant, vulnerable, dangerous, victimised, bad, innocent, vicious, debilitated, perverse, maladjusted, uneducable, temperamental and abandoned children and young people from the 1820s to the 1980s, including medical, psychiatric, psychological, criminological and sociological knowledge. Attention will need to be paid to the prosopography of the players and their networks, to the ways in which knowledge is constituted (epistemological matrices, places and institutions, media such as journals in particular), to the role of transnational organisations in the circulation and legitimisation of knowledge, and to the reflexivity of young people with regard to this knowledge, as perceived within institutional archives.The periodisation could be refined, as could the areas chosen to study the circulation and transfer of knowledge (Europe, North and South America, including colonial contexts). The construction of categories and knowledge on irregular childhood and youth will require an approach in terms of gender, class and 'race'. By combining these approaches, intersectional analysis should make it possible to question the gendered differences in categorisations, but also to see, in a diachronic study, the changes in a justice system and child protection marked by an over-representation of the working classes, while assessing the impact on knowledge of the so-called cultural origins of young people and their families (from Lombrosian anthropometry to Devereux's interculturalism).

Activities

The postdoctoral researcher will work on the one hand on the sources of production and circulation of knowledge strictly speaking, such as scientific works, scholarly publications, scientific congresses, scholarly and professional journals, studies and expert reports in the service of transnational organisations in the 20th century, etc., and on the other hand on the sources of practice, so as to understand how institutions contribute to shaping knowledge, but also to what extent the youth population, the object of knowledge, incorporates and can also shape this knowledge. The post-doctoral student's main activities will consist of :- collecting data and making it available to researchers (digitisation, bibliographic and archival database),- analyse the data in the form of a research report,- publish one or more individual and/or collective articles on the analysis of the data collected during the project.- Organise a scientific event during year 2,- Promote the research by contributing to the laboratory's various dissemination channels (blogs, events such as Researchers' Night, participatory science actions, arts and science projects, etc.).

The confrontation between institutional sources and personal sources should be conducive to highlighting the agentivity of children and young people, particularly by questioning their knowledge about the knowledge that is applied to them.

Skills

Applicants must hold a doctorate in history (defended within the last 3 years as at 1 December 2023) on the themes of childhood or youth and have research skills demonstrated by at least one publication related to the project theme.

• Open-mindedness or interest/appetite for interdisciplinary approaches and for setting up and leading collaborative and group projects.
• Knowledge of IT tools
• Language skills: French (read, written, spoken); English (read, written, spoken); another language, if necessary
• Writing skills, ability to formulate a scientific project, to produce documents from a group, to write a research article
• Ability to work in a team / collaboratively / on multi-disciplinary projects
• Ability to work in compliance with rules and procedures
• Autonomy, organisational skills and ability to be accountable

Work Context

The UMR TEMOS Temps, Mondes, Sociétés brings together around sixty teacher-researchers and researchers under the supervision of the CNRS (INSHS) and the universities of Angers, Le Mans and Lorient. The theme of the history of childhood and youth is part of the "childhood and youth" axis of the MSH Ange Guépin and the Pôle universitaire ligérien d'études sur l'enfance et la jeunesse, which includes a chair in "Parole et pouvoir d'agir des enfants et des jeunes" ("Children and youth's voice and power to act") held by TEMOS at the University of Angers. This working environment is highly conducive to interdisciplinary dialogue with other social sciences and humanities, as well as with the health sector. The position is located in Angers (Maison de la Recherche Germaine Tillion). Regular participation in the laboratory's scientific meetings is required. The post-doc will work under the supervision of Véronique Blanchard, as part of the CPJ Child Studies project, and David Niget, as part of the TEMOS Axis 1 activities. He/she will be able to share his/her thoughts with other TEMOS teacher-researchers specialising in the history of childhood and youth in the contemporary period: Yves Denéchère, Nahema Hanafi, Éric Pierre and Romain Robinet.

Constraints and risks

Short-term assignments in archive centres in France and abroad are to be expected.