- Are you thinking about spending one or two years as a postdoc in a very active and international research environment?
Prof. Santiago Zabala, ICREA-UPF research professor with the Department of Humanities and supervisor of the UPF Center for Gianni Vattimo’s Philosophy and Archives of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), is looking for candidates willing to submit a MSCA-PF project on any of these domains: Emergency, warnings, Interpretation, Vattimo, Mouffe, Rorty, Zizek, Castoriadis, and other continental philosophers.
The Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme (MSCA-PF) is a prestigious European funding programme that supports mobility, career development, and training within and beyond Europe. The scheme offers highly competitive salary and research costs.
About us
Santiago Zabala is a philosopher and cultural critic. Since 2010 he has been ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities of UPF, where he teaches contemporary philosophy, supervises Ph.D. theses, and directs the UPF Center for Gianni Vattimo’s Archives and Philosophy. Before moving to Barcelona he was an Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Potsdam University and a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to an extensive speaking schedule at conferences, festivals, and biennales, Zabala is also visiting professor in several Universities in Asia, Europe, and North America.
His books, articles, and research focus on the meaning of art, politics, and freedom in the twenty-first century when, as he claims, "the greatest emergency has become the absence of emergency." The goal of philosophy for Zabala is to thrust us into these absent emergencies (such as climate change or economic inequality) in order to disrupt the ongoing “return to order” that surveillance capitalism and right-wing populism are imposing upon us. These problems are discussed in his most recent books—Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Outspoken: A Manifesto for the 21st Century (co-edit with Adrian Parr, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) —and in many articles. His last book is Signs from the Future. A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025).
Zabala is also the coauthor of Hermeneutic Communism (with G. Vattimo, Columbia University Press, 2011, object of a critical study Making Communism Hermeneutical: Reading Vattimo and Zabala, Springer Verlag, 2017); author of The Remains of Being (Columbia University Press, 2009) and The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2008); and editor of several books and special journal issues with contributions from Judith Butler, Umberto Eco, and other renowned thinkers. His opinion articles have appeared in The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other international media outlets. A complete list of his writings can be found in his CV.
The Department of Humanities has been very successful in obtaining MSCA-PF projects: since 2015, 27 researchers have joined the Department with such contracts. Amongst these, 2 have been supervised by Prof. Zabala.
Eligibility criteria
MSCA-PF are for Postdoctoral Researchers of up to 8 years after the PhD. Applicants from any country may apply, but must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the submission deadline to the European Commission (9/9/2027).
Selection process
Applicants should check that they fulfil all the eligibility criteria and then send an expression of interest consisting of a CV, a summary presentation of the research proposal (c. 2 pages) and the contact information of at least two referees.
Expressions of interest must be submitted by email by November 30, 2026. The title of the e-mail must be "MSCA application – Prof. Santiago Zabala – your name and surname".
Proposals will be preselected on the basis of internal evaluation.
Support program
In addition to receiving multiple feedback from your supervisor, if chosen to submit the proposal to the European Commission, you will also receive advice from a dedicated research advisor at UPF's Research Service, with hom you will exchange your proposal for feedback three times. Additionally, you will be invited to join an internal online Info session where you will get to know the do's and don'ts of these fellowships.