AHP readers may be interested in two doctoral positions at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies Geneva. Applications are due 01.03.2021. Details below.

PhD position “Observing African Child-Rearing Practices in Psychology and Anthropology”

Background
The overall project “Decolonising the Psyche: The Politics of Ethnopsychology, 1930-1980” retraces debates on the universality and particularity of the human psyche during the “long moment of decolonisation”. The project focuses on the history of ethnopsychology, a scientific field at the intersection of anthropology and the psychological disciplines. Ethnopsychology (an umbrella term chosen here for a variety of approaches such as ‘ethnopsychiatry’, “ethnopsychoanalysis”, “cross-cultural psychology” and others) emerged in the interwar period and was reshaped after World War II. A central hypothesis of the project is that ethnopsychology was a technique for attempting to come to terms with, and even to manage, the end of empire, all the while acting as a factor catalysing it. A second hypothesis is that ethnopsychology functioned both as a tool of colonialism (for instance, by pathologising anti-imperial movements as “insane”) and as a medium of anticolonial critique (as exemplified in the works of thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and others). The project asks the following questions: How did psychological experts conceptualise the psyche of people from the Global South? What political visions and practical programmes did these conceptualisations entail? To answer these questions, the project historically examines different strands of the psychological disciplines in their respective dialogue with anthropology.

PhD project “Observing African Child-Rearing Practices in Psychology and Anthropology”
This project is located at the intersection of gender history and the history of developmental psychology (child psychology). Since the interwar culture-and-personality school, anthropologists and psychologists regarded infantile socialisation as the key site for the psychic reproduction of society. Scientific debates on child-rearing provided a baseline for psychological models of attachment and development as well as for the political governing of family models. The project develops a novel perspective informed by the history of science. Where did research on child-rearing informed by differing backgrounds – for instance, in the tradition of Jean Piaget as opposed to the US-American “psychological anthropology” – converge, and where did it diverge? Within that broad framework, the PhD student is encouraged to develop their own distinct research agenda according to their interests and background. A demonstrated interest in gender history and/or African history is a plus.

PhD position “Culture’ and Migration in Psychiatric Epidemiology after 1945”

Background
The overall project “Decolonising the Psyche: The Politics of Ethnopsychology, 1930-1980” retraces debates on the universality and particularity of the human psyche during the “long moment of decolonisation”. The project focuses on the history of ethnopsychology, a scientific field at the intersection of anthropology and the psychological disciplines. Ethnopsychology (an umbrella term chosen here for a variety of approaches such as ‘ethnopsychiatry’, “ethnopsychoanalysis”, “cross-cultural psychology” and others) emerged in the interwar period and was reshaped after World War II. A central hypothesis of the project is that ethnopsychology was a technique for attempting to come to terms with, and even to manage, the end of empire, all the while acting as a factor catalysing it. A second hypothesis is that ethnopsychology functioned both as a tool of colonialism (for instance, by pathologising anti-imperial movements as “insane”) and as a medium of anticolonial critique (as exemplified in the works of thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and others). The project asks the following questions: How did psychological experts conceptualise the psyche of people from the Global South? What political visions and practical programmes did these conceptualisations entail? To answer these questions, the project historically examines different strands of the psychological disciplines in their respective dialogue with anthropology.

PhD project “’Culture’ and Migration in Psychiatric Epidemiology after 1945”
This project is located at the intersection of the history of psychiatry and migration history. Global health institutions such as the WHO and the World Federation for Mental Health were crucial for the emerging discipline of psychiatric epidemiology that studied patterns of mental disorders around the globe. Intense debates were sparked by the question as to what extent psychopathological entities were determined by “culture” and, especially, by the transcending of “cultural boundaries”. WFMH and WHO considered the mobility of populations within the decolonising Global South as well as migration processes from the South to Europe as a concern for mental health. The project historicises the connections psychiatric epidemiology drew between culture and migration as a psycho-pathogenic factor: How were “traditional culture”, dislocation and “modernity” transformed into a problem from a psychiatric perspective? Within that broad framework, the PhD student is encouraged to develop their own distinct research agenda according to their interests and background. A demonstrated interest in the history of psychiatry and/or migration history is a plus.