Are you fascinated by the legal and social history of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period? Do you want to be an active player in a truly international and interdisciplinary environment, within a prestigious MSCA Doctoral Network, funded by the European Commission? Do you want to know more about how earlier generations regulated the post-mortal transfer of patrimony, through last wills and related legal mechanisms? Are you interested in the interplay between societal dynamics, “learned law” and testamentary freedom? Are you willing to leave your home country and to start working as a Doctoral Candidate in history at a foreign university? Are you looking forward to getting the chance of a six-months research stay in yet another country, at yet another high-level university, and a three-month internship in a museum? Then, you might be the candidate we are looking for!

This Doctoral Candidate (DC) will be employed at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw, a leading center for research on the history of Poland and Central Europe. The Faculty conducts both team-based and individual research, aiming to address important questions in the study of the past. It also fosters methodological reflection on the nature of historical research, the status of sources, and the history of historiography.

The DC will be supervised by prof. dr hab. Agnieszki Bartoszewicz (social history, University of Warsaw) and co-supervised by prof. dr. Adrian Schmidt-Recla (legal history, FSU Jena). In the course of this fellowship, the DC will work six months in Jena and three months at the Museum of Warsaw. 

This DC will focus on the analysis of wills drawn up by Warsaw burghers between 1543 and 1604 and partly in Latin, partly in Old Polish, preserved in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, in order to reconstruct the social and economic structure, as well as the family relationships that influence the testators’ decisions. Particular attention will be paid to examining the position of the spouse, especially the widow, in the context of the law and the restrictions imposed both by the family and by the existing legal regulations. An important area of research will also be the role of children in wills and how testamentary practices reflect family relationships in Polish towns.

Responsibilities

In the framework of the MSCA Doctoral Network “TESTAMENT”, the Doctoral Candidate will have the following responsibilities:

• researching testators and their families in early modern Warsaw (Old & New Warsaw, 1543–1604), and preparing a doctoral dissertation on this topic;
• actively participating in the activities of the TESTAMENT-network (summer and winter schools, monthly online meetings, concluding conference);
• presenting the research at at least one international conference;
• writing at least one peer-reviewed scientific article;
• actively participating in the activities of the Research Unit and of the Doctoral School of the University of Warsaw;
• conducting a six-month research stay at the FSU Jena [which can be divided in several shorter terms];
• conducting a three-month internship at the Museum of Warsaw, where the DC will be involved, inter alia, in organising an online exhibition on Warsaw last wills.