CENTER FOR RELIGOUS STUDIES (CERES):

Science and Dogma (SCIGMA) – Tracing Natural Knowledge within Scholastic Theology (1545–1789)
In order to fill a fixed-term position in part-time (75%: 29,8725 hours/week) 01.02.2026, we are looking for a
PhD researcher (m/f/x)
CERES is a Central Research Unit of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. It currently brings together over 50 researchers, which makes it one of the largest centers for the comparative study of religion in Europe. The center combines a focus on the history of religions with theoretical and empirical approaches in the study of religions. A position of a PhD researcher is to be filled for 3 years starting on 1 February 2026. The PhD position is part of the ERC Starting Grant (101164040) led by Prof. Christoph Sander as Principal Investigator (PI): Science and Dogma (SCIGMA) – Tracing Natural Knowledge within Scholastic Theology (1545–1789). SCIGMA investigates how naturalism and empiricism informed scholastic and dogmatic theology, from the Council of Trent to the French Revolution across all Western Christian denominations. For more information, see www.scigma.de and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16535350.
Scope: part-time
Duration: fixed-term, 3 years
Start: 01.02.2026
Apply by: 2025-09-15

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS:

• Knowledge of Christian dogmatics and Reformation history
• Experience with bibliographic software (e.g., Zotero)
• Interest in or familiarity with Semantic Web standards (e.g., RDF, SPARQL)
• Interest in or experience with digital approaches to large text corpora (e.g., OCR, topic modeling, semantic search)

• Designing and conducting a doctoral research project in close collaboration with the PI, focusing on the intersection of religious and intellectual history
• Contributing to the activities of the SCIGMA team, including the organization of workshops, co-publications, and related tasks
• Digitally recording and managing research data generated in the dissertation project