Daily Archives: 11 August 2016

RMIT: Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships – Call For Applications

Our annual fellowship scheme is aligned with the RMIT strategic plan and our eight Enabling Capability Platforms. Successful applicants will be offered either a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellowship or a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship, dependent on the applicant’s level of experience and track record.

Senior Research Fellows and Research Fellows plan, develop and engage in high quality, impactful research projects, which address local, national, regional and global challenges. Our Fellows will be expected to attract external research funding including competitive grants from both national and international sources, and produce high quality outputs.

Our Fellows are located within our academic Schools. Research Fellows will embed his/her research expertise into the life of the School through building research networks with local and national, internal and external partners. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the relevant school that will host the appointment before applying.

Fellows may undertake limited teaching duties linked to their active research projects, to promote student engagement and further embed research activity in teaching.

At the end of the Fellowship it is expected that Fellowship awardees will be offered a continuing position, conditional on performance criteria being met, in either a teaching and research academic or a research only academic position depending on School needs.

For full information, and to apply, please visit: http://www.rmit.edu.au/content/rmit-ui/en/research/research-expertise/our-reputation/people/outstanding-research-fellowship-schemes/vice-chancellors-research-fellowships

Applications for the 2016 round are open from 29 July until 28 August, 2016.

Professor Francois Soyer, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Europe 1100 – 1800 (Sydney Node) Free Public Lecture

“The Affective Politics of Fear in Early Modern Spain: The Recycling of an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory into an Anti-Muslim One”, Professor Francois Soyer

Date: Wednesday August 24
Time: 12:00-2:00pm
Venue: Rogers Room, Woolley Building, University of Sydney

This work examines how the study of emotions can help us understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and how they are exploited by governments and elite institutions to provoke fear and forge collective identities. It focuses on a particular conspiracy theory in early modern Spain: that of a vengeful Muslim doctor known as el vengador who systemically murdered Christian patients. It argues that the myth was in fact a clumsy recycling of a well–established anti-Semitic myth and that it also built upon existing anxieties about medical treatment. The libel of medical murder was part of an ‘affective politics of fear’ in which the discourse of hate was instrumentalized by sections of the ruling hierarchy and polemicists to mobilize early modern Iberians against certain groups designated as a threat. Jews and Muslims became negative reference groups, equal objects of fear and anxiety whose role was interchangeable in order to formulate a normative collective identity.


Francois Soyer is an Associate Professor in Late Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Southampton and a Partner Investigator of the Centre for the History of Emotions. His research focuses on anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim propaganda produced between 1450 and 1750.