The Leiden Institute for Area Studies ( is committed to the integration of disciplinary and regional-historical perspectives. LIAS has as its aim the advancement of teaching and research of Area Studies at Leiden University and in the wider academic community. LIAS comprises the Schools of Asian Studies (SAS) and Middle Eastern Studies (SMES). Area specializations in SAS include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South & Southeast Asian and Tibetan Studies. LIAS staff have disciplinary expertise across the humanities and the social sciences.
Starting September 2011 (or earlier if the candidate is available) LIAS has available one full-time (38 hrs), four-year Ph.D. position in the University’s profile area “Asian Traditions and Modernities” (AMT) on an aspect of the society or politics of contemporary China. The fellowship is funded by the Leiden University Executive Board on the appointment of Professor Frank Pieke as Chair of Modern China Studies
Description of Profile Area
AMT is one of the 11 profile areas of Leiden University that transcend the boundaries between specialist fields. AMT is coordinated by the Faculty of Humanities and the Leiden Institute for Area Studies, but is fully interdisciplinary in focus. AMT’s aim is to raise the visibility and strength of Asian studies in the University, where “Asia” includes all of East, Central, South and Southeast Asia.
AMT builds on the long history of Leiden University in research and teaching on Asian traditions, especially in the fields of religious studies, anthropology, philology, law and literature, to explore the debates, disagreements, disjunctures and conflicts that prevail in Asia in the modern age. The global prominence of East Asia and the rapidly developing economies of South and Southeast Asia render Asia a key case for the study of the fashioning of modernities in everyday life, state practices and the global arena. AMT focuses on five themes:
- Asia in the international system looks at global Asia, where the emergence of India and China as regional hegemons is reconfiguring issues of security and conflict
- Power and limits of the Asian state focuses on the transformation of and challenges posed to the state in Asia
- Asian debates on history and modernity explores Asia’s role in shaping the meaning of rationalism, nationalism, secularism, equality, justice and rights
- New and old diversities in Asia looks at how Asia’s new modernities are being forged from the meeting of peoples, cultures, life-styles and ideologies
- Production and flow of modern Asian cultures encompasses the movement of practices, styles, objects, fashions, media and the like that have come to exemplify the modern in particular places
Doctoral (Ph.D.) Fellowship
The Ph.D. fellows is expected to conduct research leading to a Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Professor Pieke on a topic that includes, but is not limited to, administrative reform, public policy, state-society relations, international or domestic migration, ethnicity, gender, kinship, ritual, religion, life styles, social structure and social stratification, consumption and popular culture, poverty and poverty alleviation. The project will have to be firmly embedded in a relevant discipline in the social sciences or humanities, such as anthropology, political science, sociology, history or sinology. Research ought to have a strong fieldwork component and should include the use of modern spoken and written Chinese.
