Two PhD Positions (0.9 FTE) in the transnational history of friendship and disability

Project description

This project will follow and contextualize how influential international organizations and communities in which people with and without disabilities have lived and worked together in countries all over the world, constructed, practiced and strived for friendship as a “moral good” since the 1960s. By analyzing under-investigated archival data, published stories, and by conducting oral history interviews, DisFriend will enrich historiography with the history of overlooked but influential counter-hegemonic internationalisms and a rewriting of the history of community care from the perspective of cognitively disabled people. Moreover, DisFriend’s transnational moral history approach opens a new horizon in research on loneliness of marginalized groups beyond national approaches that only highlight vulnerability.

We are looking for candidates to focus on one of the following subprojects:

1. Globalizing friendship. The first subproject focuses on the way in which international organizations constructed friendship between people with and without cognitive disabilities as a moral good. It studies the global spread of the idea of friendship from a historical perspective, based on archival materials (publications, minutes, correspondence, and reports) and oral history interviews. It investigates for instance, why L’Arche International was successful in countries such as France and Canada, but rarely started communities in Scandinavia and Latin America. Moreover, it places L’Arche in the context of international disability organizations with other aims and concepts such as human rights and studies how friendship played a role (or not) in the policies of influential organizations such as Disabled People International.
2. Universalizing friendship. The second subproject investigates how friendship was constructed as a moral good in the international literature since the 1960s. It follows how friendship between people with and without cognitive disabilities was perceived by different experts on cognitive disability and by people from other fields such as disability studies, theology, and philosophy. It could for instance study the relatively well-known case of friendship between the theologian Henri Nouwen and the cognitively disabled Adam Arnett. The subproject follows a critical approach by highlighting who did (not) embrace the idea of friendship, by articulating how the voice of disabled people was (not) heard, and by assessing the broader applicability of such cases. The research will mainly be based on published materials (books, articles, reports).

More information and registration.