Vacancy for Postdoctoral Researcher in Financial History at the University of Antwerp

For its participation to the Horizon 2020 EURHISFIRM project the Department of Accountancy and Finance of the University of Antwerp is seeking a full-time postdoctoral researcher in the area of Economic History – Financial Economics.

EURHISFIRM is a consortium of eleven research institutions from seven European countries and is financed by the European Commission’s Infrastructure Development Program of Horizon 2020. Its aim is to develop world-class research infrastructure (https://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=home). EURHISFIRM aims at designing a European research infrastructure for long-term company data. Using this infrastructure researchers and other stakeholders will have easy electronic access to long-term data series on European companies. It will develop methods to construct national databases, to link them and to query them in a uniform way. Innovative methods will be developed to efficiently feed data to the databases, thereby enabling a “big data” revolution in the historical social sciences and unlocking European cultural heritage to a broad audience.

The person filling this vacancy will (a) compile a detailed inventory and description of all official price lists of exchanges in a number of European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Poland, …) (b) compile an inventory and description of all sources pertaining to companies and securities listed on these exchanges, and (c) propose a high-quality standard allowing to compare the concepts used in the different countries over the last 200 years. This standard will be used by other teams to homogenize data. He/she will work at SCOB, the University of Antwerp research center for historical research on financial data (www.scob.be), and in close cooperation with the research teams of the other members of the consortium.

Profile and requirements

You hold a doctorate degree (PhD) in economics or business administration (with a strong interest in history) or in history (with a strong interest in financial economics). Candidates from other fields are also welcome to the extent they are willing to engage in financial-economic history. You are fluent in academic English (speaking and writing).

We offer

An appointment as a postdoctoral researcher for a period of two years, with a possibility of renewal for max. 1 year; the date of appointment is 1 April 2018.

How to apply?

Please send your application, accompanied by your CV and cover letter to jan.annaert@uantwerpen.be before the closing date 28 February 2018. For questions about the profile and the description of duties, please contact Prof Dr. Jan Annaert (jan.annaert@uantwerpen.be) or Dr. Frans Buelens (frans.buelens@uantwerpen.be).