PhD – History of Law – Poland

The project

The MSCA doctoral network “TESTAMENT” (Testamentary Practices on the Periphery of the Ius Commune Tradition: Freedom and Oppression (c. 1420–1620)) is funded by the European Union under grant agreement No 101226689. It brings together five contracting universities: KU Leuven (Belgium, coordinating institution), Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland), University of Warsaw (Poland), Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) and Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany). The network also includes several partner institutions, museums and archives, which will host PhD students for placements, enabling them to gain practical experience.

TESTAMENT, an interdisciplinary consortium of social and legal historians from the universities of Leuven, Kraków, Jena, Prague and Warsaw, will study the dynamics of freedom and lack of freedom, of power and oppression, through the analysis of testamentary law and practice in Western and Central Europe (c. 1420–1620), with particular attention to regions situated on the periphery of the academic tradition of the late Middle Ages and early Modern Age. Project members will develop a framework that transcends the traditional dichotomy between freedom and lack of freedom, and will define criteria to situate specific cases within this spectrum. Based on exhaustive documentary and historical-doctoral research, the project will analyse the family, political, jurisdictional and jurisprudential dynamics that determined the scope of testamentary dispositions of property.

To this end, the consortium will train promising young researchers to become professional social and legal historians, equipped with critical thinking, communication skills, a cooperative spirit and digital competencies. PhD students will join a unique international network of researchers in law and social history. They will receive training in disciplinary and cross-disciplinary skills through summer and winter schools, monthly online seminars, placements at another partner academic institution abroad, and enriching experiences in collaboration with non-academic partners (particularly archives and museums).

Responsibilities

Within the framework of the MSCA “TESTAMENT” Doctoral Network, the PhD candidate will have the following responsibilities:

• To research the wills of professors at the University of Kharkiv and judicial records relating to testamentary inheritance, revealing the complexity of overlapping legal systems and testamentary freedom in early modern Kraków, whilst shedding light on the professors’ assets, intellectual culture, family ties and career paths, and to prepare a doctoral thesis on this topic;
• actively participate in the activities of the TESTAMENT network (summer and winter schools, monthly online meetings, closing conference);
• present the research at at least one international conference;
• write at least one peer-reviewed academic article;
• actively participate in the activities of the Research Unit and the Doctoral School of Social Sciences at the Krakow University of Law;

Requirements: