Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Leiden, Holland - vacancy post

 Full Professor - Brazilian Studies

Leiden University · Leiden University Institute for History 

Netherlands, Leiden

JOB DESCRIPTION

During the last decade Brazil has achieved an important position on the global stage. The country today represents the seventh largest economy in the world and has been able to strengthen its political presence at the international scene. Today Brazil is an important member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), representing the largest emerging economies. In addition, Brazil is rapidly positioning itself in a leading position within the Latin American region.

Against this background Leiden University has decided to establish a Chair in Brazilian Studies. Candidates are invited to apply for a full Professorship Brazilian studies with a special focus on contemporary Brazilian society. The chair holder will be based in Leiden in the Institute for History and be in charge of the research and teaching activities in the field of modern Brazilian history, both in the Latin American Studies programme and in the International Studies programme. The appointment will start in January 2016.

Key responsibilities
The new chair holder is expected to make a solid contribution to the teaching programmes in Brazilian Studies and in International Studies at both the bachelor and master levels within the field of modern history. In addition, the chair holder will supervise PhD theses on Modern Brazil, design academic projects and apply for external funding for these projects. She/he is also expected to undertake managerial duties for the Latin American Studies programme, for the Institute of History or for the Faculty of Humanities.

The chair holder is preferably a generalist possessing a comprehensive academic knowledge and expertise on present-day Brazilian society. This includes expertise regarding general developmental issues such as poverty, inequality, access to public services, developmental strategies and the leading position of Brazil in Latin America and among the emerging economies. Relevant fields the chair holder in Brazilian Studies is expected to cover are Brazil in the global context (including Brazil foreign policies, Dutch-Brazilian relations and the BRICS context), Brazilian local politics, social policies and economics.

Due to the fact that the bachelor and master programmes of the Latin American Studies programme are based on an area studies perspective, these programme require a scholar with a background in either the humanities or the social sciences who can teach courses involving at least two of the topics mentioned above. The Institute for History welcomes a variety of inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to historical research and the social sciences, particularly in the interface between modern History, Politics, Economics and International Relations.

DESIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Selection criteria
Applicants will be expected to possess:

• many years of postdoctoral experience and a well-established name within Brazilian Studies world-wide;
• a broad experience in fulfilling leading positions within academic organizations; 
• a good record of academic publications on Brazil in international journals and publishers;
• an extensive academic network both in Brazil and among Brazil experts abroad;
• a profound and comprehensive knowledge of Brazilian history and development, with special emphasis on the contemporary situation;
• an active presence in key academic forums and at international conferences;
• a very good proficiency in Portuguese, Spanish and English. If the candidate comes from abroad, she/he must be prepared to learn the Dutch language within two years;
• a proven capacity to obtain external research funding;
• a potential to develop interdisciplinary research and teaching within the field of area studies in the Faculty of Humanities.

ABOUT THE EMPLOYER

About Brazilian Studies at Leiden
In recent years Leiden University has invested a considerable amount of resources in developing a limited number of ‘profile areas’, one of which is ‘Global Interactions of People, Cultures and Power’. The holder of the chair in Brazilian Studies is expected to make an important contribution to this ‘profile area’ by contributing expertise on Brazilian politics and social policies and on Brazil’s role as a player in global political and economic affairs.

At the same time the holder of the chair will be teaching courses for the Bachelor programme of Latin American Studies. In 2014 this programme started with a track on Brazilian Studies, which students can follow from the first year of the bachelor. Students can specialize in Brazilian Studies and in the Portuguese language. The other programme track is Spanish Latin America with a specialization in the Spanish language. The bachelor programme also provides courses on Brazilian culture and language and on Portuguese linguistics.

The Faculty of Humanities is rich in expertise in fields such as philosophy, religious studies, history, art history, literature, linguistics and area studies covering nearly every region of the world. Our faculty is home to more than 6,000 students and 800 staff members. For more information see
http://hum.leiden.edu/

The Leiden Institute for History is one of the six research institutes of the Faculty of Humanities. The institute is responsible for the main part of the historical research carried out at Leiden University, see http://www.hum.leiden.edu/history.

Terms and conditions
If the successful candidate has already held a full professorship or if she/he has successfully completed a tenure track, she/he will be eligible for a permanent, fulltime appointment. In other cases the appointment will initially be for a period of five years, convertible into a permanent position in case of satisfactory performance.

The gross monthly salary will be between € 5.103,- and € 7.431,-, commensurate with qualifications and experience. These amounts are based on a fulltime appointment and are in conformity with current salary scales under the collective employment agreement (CAO) for Dutch Universities.

An appointment at Leiden University includes pension build-up and other benefits, including an annual holiday premium of 8% and an end-of-year premium of 8.3%. Candidates from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for a substantial tax break. More information about the terms of employment can be found at: http://staff.leiden.edu

Information
For more information, please contact the dean of the Faculty of Humanities, prof. dr. H.W. van den Doel, e-mail h.w.van.den.doel@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Applications
Applications should be written in English include four sub-documents, in the following order:

• A letter explaining the applicant’s interest in the Chair of Modern Brazilian History, the abilities and achievements that qualify her/him for this position, and a short statement concerning her/his views on the development of Brazilian Studies as an area study;
• CV including education and employment history, publications, courses designed/taught (including assessments), grants and awards, and linguistic capabilities;
• Names, positions and email addresses of three academic experts in the field of Brazilian Studies who may be asked to provide references (no reference letters are required);
• A research plan for the next three years including a brief outline of at least one individual or team projects (2 pages max.).

The deadline for applications is 22 October 2015. Please quote the vacancy number (15-331) in the motivation letter and in the subject line of the e-mail, and send it electronically via the "APPLY" button. All requested documents should be submitted together in a single PDF-document, named ‘Family name – given name – vacancy number’.

Interviews will be held on November 16th and 30th, 2015.

Reference number: 15-331

Disciplines: History

Variedades do capitalismo: liberal de mercado e coordenacao regulada - resenha de livro

Um livro interessante que chama a atenção para aspectos da política econômica dos Países Baixos, cuja experiência pode oferecer elementos úteis de informação para a discussão dos modelos de políticas econômicas mais suscetíveis de oferecer resultados com melhores retornos econômicos e sociais.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Published by EH.Net (August 2015)

Jeroen Touwen, Coordination in Transition: The Netherlands and the World Economy, 1950-2010. Leiden: Brill, 2014. xiv + 385 pp. $154 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-90-04-27255-2.

Reviewed for EH.Net by Annette van den Berg, School of Economics, Utrecht University.

One of the great debates of the late twentieth century has been around the well-known study Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (VoC) by Peter Hall and David Soskice, in which developed countries are characterized as either a Liberal Market Economy (LME) or a Coordinated Market Economy (CME), based on five interrelated criteria (spheres). Many scholars have applied the VoC approach since then — including economic historians — trying to reconcile the rather static nature of the approach with a historical, more dynamic analysis. Jeroen Touwen (lecturer in Economic and Social History at Leiden University, and the scientific director of the N.W. Posthumus Institute) adds to this line of research, by applying VoC to the case of the Netherlands after World War II in a careful, critical manner. This has resulted in an impressive and voluminous book of which the principal title, Coordination in Transition, neatly captures the key theme: How did a typical CME react to the structural changes as a result of ongoing globalization (influenced by trade liberalization and technological developments, foremost in information and communications technology), causing a shift to a market-based and knowledge-based economy? One of the new contributions of this book is that it also analyzes recent economic history of the Netherlands, in contrast with most other Dutch studies that only treat the twentieth century.

The Netherlands makes for an interesting case because it is seen as a successful and hybrid CME, with a liberal tradition in business relations as in Anglo-American countries; a strong welfare state like in Scandinavia; and a high degree of coordination similar to Germany. Also readers with no particular interest in the Dutch case (or those who think they already know the country, for that matter) will find this book worthwhile to read, as each chapter sets out with a broader treatment of theoretical considerations before analyzing the Netherlands, each time accompanied by a comparison with several other western OECD countries; and as the author makes relevant statements about (developments of) LMEs and CMEs in general. In so doing, he uses theoretical concepts from several socio-political fields of science, and of many statistical sources, thereby providing the reader with ample information and guidance for further research. The large number of interesting footnotes and references underline the thoroughness and dedication with which the book was written.

In my view, Chapter 2 is the most innovative part of the book because here the author comes up with a novel view on how the original, static VoC framework can accommodate for changes through time by adding a temporal dimension and by focusing on the central concept of non-market coordination, which not only encompasses state-induced regulation, but all kinds of information exchange and negotiation between different stakeholders operating at various levels in the economy. He argues that CMEs, despite all having become more liberal in reaction to structural change, remained characterized by a high degree of deliberative institutions (although often in an adjusted form). Hence, whereas Hall and Soskice theorized that due to institutional complementarities, deregulation of financial markets could “snowball into changes in other spheres as well,” possibly causing a break-up of CMEs, Touwen contends that the overall convergence to the LME did not take place, for which he provides plentiful evidence in the subsequent four chapters.

The limited space in this review does not allow me to elaborate on these chapters in depth. In a nutshell, in all of them Dutch postwar economic history is analyzed by focusing, in succession, on the business system, labor relations, the welfare state and economic policy. As these concern strongly overlapping topics an inevitable disadvantage thereof is that the same themes are addressed several times (be it from different perspectives), which is somewhat tiresome if one would read the whole book in one go. On the other hand, each chapter comes up with additional information and interesting details, thereby delivering further building blocks for the main message of the book: when faced by shocks and external threats, almost in all time periods (except during the polarized 1970s) the Dutch responded gradually but nevertheless adequately via an intricate system of coordination in all five distinguished spheres of the economy (in industrial relations, information sharing with employees, corporate governance, inter-firm networks, and vocational training). Although a deliberate choice of the author, it is a missed opportunity not to elaborate on this last-mentioned sphere, for reasons not explicitly mentioned.  Here and there he just touches upon this important topic, while a bit more comprehensive discussion thereof would have made the application of VoC to the Dutch case complete.

The book clearly describes how non-market coordination in the Netherlands originated in the interwar years and how it developed thereafter. At first this occurred in great harmony under guidance of the state (demand-side, Keynesian policy) in order to restore international competitiveness, culminating in the so-called Golden Years (1950s-1960s). There was close collaboration between government, employer associations and unions at all levels. During the stagflation period of the 1970s unemployment rose, labor relations hardened and the government failed to cut spending. Finally, forced by the structural changes in the world economy, by 1982 the sense of urgency was strong enough for all parties to switch to a more liberal, supply-side economic policy. Wage restraints were accepted in return for the creation of jobs, which were often part-time and temporary. The labor market thus became more flexible. Although this whole process coincided with a drastic reform of the welfare state, it was also accompanied by an active labor market policy, preventing segregation of the labor market as well as a rise in income inequality. So, “more market” went hand in hand with sustained coordination. Addressing the most recent time period, the financial crisis of 2007-10 clearly demonstrates the negative consequences of introducing too much free market, and underscores the continued need for coordination and government regulation. Touwen describes the success of the Dutch CME in terms of “managed liberalization under the wing of consultation.” The ability of non-market coordination to accommodate change forms the connecting thread.

Annette van den Berg (lecturer at Utrecht University School of Economics) is the author (together with Erik Nijhof) of “Variations of Coordination: Labour Relations in the Netherlands” in: K. Sluyterman (ed.), Varieties of Capitalism and Business History. The Dutch Case (Routledge, 2015) and (together with John Groenewegen and Antoon Spithoven) of Institutional Economics. An Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 

Copyright (c) 2015 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (administrator@eh.net). Published by EH.Net (August 2015). All EH.Net reviews are archived at http://eh.net/book-reviews/

Estudantes: o Ingles como unico fator para voces terem uma boa bolsa e bons estudos no exterior

Bolsas de Estudos – Orange Tulip Scholarship Brazil Programme O Nuffic Neso Brazil, escritório de representação oficial do ensino superior holandês no Brasil, lançou nessa terça-feira (10/09) o Orange Tulip Scholarship Brazil Programme 2014/2015 (OTS), programa que concede bolsas de graduação e pós-graduação, integrais e parciais, em diversas universidades holandesas exclusivamente para estudantes Brasileiros. Existem bolsas de diversos valores e o benefício mais alto chega a 32.500 Euros por ano, valor custeado pelas próprias instituições holandesas. As opções são para programas de Bacharelado, MBA , Mestrado e Short-Degree (onde só o último ano da graduação é cursado no exterior), com aulas totalmente em inglês. As oportunidades envolvem mais de 150 cursos em áreas como: Business, Comunicação, Design, Direito, Finanças, Ciências Sociais, Ciências da Saúde, Ciências Naturais, T.I, Engenharia, Turismo e Indústria Criativa. Para participar, os candidatos devem acessar www.nesobrazil.org/ots e verificar a relação de cursos e os valores das bolsas oferecidas por cada universidade. Os critérios de admissão variam de acordo com a instituição escolhida, mas proficiência na língua inglesa (comprovada através dos exames Toefl ou Ielts) e documentos que comprovem grau de escolaridade são mandatórios. Vale lembrar que todo material deve apresentar tradução juramentada para o inglês. Os interessados devem preencher o formulário de inscrição, disponível nesse link e enviar por e-mail para info@nesobrazil.org. Não há teto para o número de brasileiros a serem admitidos. As inscrições vão até março/2014 e o resultado da seleção será divulgado em maio do próximo ano.

Piratas Somalis: Holanda condena cinco a cinco anos

Acho que os holandeses foram muito lenientes com os piratas somalis: cinco anos (provavelmente menos) por pirataria é muito pouco. Deveria ser no mínimo 15 anos e daí para mais. Se a pirataria é um crime sério, como afirmam os procuradores, então cinco anos parece um presente...
Paulo R. Almeida

Dutch court sends 5 to jail for piracy
Shanghai Daily, June 18, 2010

FIVE Somali men were sentenced to prison yesterday in Holland for attacking a Dutch-Antilles-flagged cargo ship with automatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade, in the first piracy case to come to trial in Europe in modern times.
The five were convicted of assaulting the Samanyulo in the Gulf of Aden in 2009 - an attack that was thwarted by helicopter-borne Danish marines. Each of the attackers was sentenced to five years in prison.
"Piracy is a serious crime that must be powerfully resisted," said presiding judge Klein Wolterink.
But one of the defendants called the decision unfair.
"Netherlands don't like Muslim people," Sayid Ali Garaar, 39, repeated several times in rough English. "This is not legal."
Other defendants shook their lawyers' hands and waved at reporters as they were escorted out of the courtroom.
The case is a landmark in the fight against the escalating incidents of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
The high-seas hijackings have persisted despite an international armada deployed by China, the United States, the European Union, NATO, Japan and South Korea.
The pirates have sometimes succeeded in collecting multi-million-dollar ransoms.
Maritime experts say the trial is unlikely to deter the piracy, which brings large amounts of money into the impoverished and lawless coastal region of Somalia.
Prosecutors had asked for seven-year sentences, but Wolterink said he took into account the difficult conditions in Somalia that led the men to piracy.
Nonetheless, he said he was swayed by the fact that the pirates "were only out for their own financial gain and didn't let themselves be troubled about damage or suffering caused to victims."
It was only by "lucky coincidence that nobody was killed or wounded," the judge said.
Other Somali piracy suspects are being held in France, Spain, Germany and the US.
Kenya has convicted 18 pirates since 2007. More than 100 accused await trial there.
Hundreds of pirates have been detained and several have been brought to Europe since the international armada was mobilized, but most have been released at sea because of the cost and difficulty of bringing them to trial.
At their trial last month the men sentenced yesterday denied wrongdoing. Most said they had been fishing and approached the container ship for help when their skiff ran out of fuel and food.
Defense lawyers argued that the Danish sailors who rescued the ship were unable to testify. But the judge cited testimony from the ship's crew that the pirates had approached threateningly.