The Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin offers a dynamic working environment that engages with current debates and global challenges while conducting research on a variety of topics and regions. The advertised position will be part of the Medical Anthropology | Global Health research area, which focuses on exploring the diversity of medical and health-related practices, institutions, and knowledge systems worldwide.
The position is linked with the DFG-funded project: Punitive Pill: Tracing the Life-Death Worlds of Sodium Pentobarbital. The project aims to explore the complex moral, socio-cultural, and politico-legal landscape surrounding the use of sodium pentobarbital (SP) in state-sanctioned executions in the United States. It investigates how the pharmaceutical, originally intended for medical purposes, has become entangled in the death penalty system. Against the background of the historical shift that turned pharmaceuticals into tools of punishment since lethal injection’s introduction in the U.S. in, the project seeks to understand SP’s role in the governance of life and death, challenging traditional views on pharmaceutical efficacy, safety, and the relation between care and violence. The use of SP in executions reveals a moral economy of life structured along gendered and ethnic-racialised lines, and shaped by state, medical, and market forces. By framing SP as a death-inducing technology and highlighting its connection with punishment and coerced death, the research aims to uncover the tensions and intersections that animate this moral economy, which disproportionately exposes certain bodies and groups to the risk of state-sanctioned executions. The proposed project employs a mixed-methods approach, combining assemblage ethnography, chemo-ethnography, participant observation, and interviews, to shed light on the implications of deliberately using pharmaceuticals to produce death as a means of punishment by state institutions.
Starting 1 March, we are looking for a Student Assistant to actively support the project with organizational and research-related tasks. The position is for 41 hours/month and limited to 12 months.
Job description :
• Sourcing, managing, and analyzing literature for the research project
• Transcription of field interviews in German, English, and Spanish
• Support in ethnographic fieldwork
• Assistance with organizational tasks, particularly the planning and execution of workshops
• Support in the preparation of project publications
Desirable :
• Enrolled in a degree program in Ethnology/Social and Cultural Anthropology or European Ethnology
• Strong proficiency in English and Spanish (B2), and preferably good knowledge of German (B1)
• Proficiency in word processing and layout software
• Experience with literature research and management
• Knowledge in the field of Medical Anthropology