[Southeast Asia] Research Fellowship Programme for Young Muslim Scholars 2007

The Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN) is pleased to announce the sixth round of the research fellowship program, Islam in Southeast Asia: View from within.

The fellowship grants will be awarded for innovative research on issues concerning economic, socio-political and cultural changes taking place in the diverse Muslim communities of Southeast Asia, especially as they relate to modernization and globalization.

Themes:

• Popular Islam
• Globalization and Identity Politics
• Islam and Changing Gender Realities
• Islam Values, Economic Activities and Social Responsibilities

Themes

Popular Islam

"Popular Islam" focuses on encouraging researchers to examine ways in which Islamic beliefs and practices reach all believers and are reflected through various means of religious. communication such as studying Khutbah in local mosques, reading Islamic booklets, and/ or listening to Muslim radio programs. The question of how Islam can shape and influence, while at the same time is being shaped by, the lives of ordinary Southeast Asian Muslims in various local contexts is just one aspect of this topic that could be analyzed.


Globalization and Identity Politics

Muslim communities in Southeast Asia are not immune from globalization processes. New forms of economic and political integration on a world scale and the accelerated flows of goods, people and information across the globe all create new opportunities and challenges for Muslims in the region. The interaction of global and regional forces with local processes has been perceived both as a threat to Muslim identities and as beneficial to the development of a new transnational Islam. This research theme seeks to explore how Muslim identities in Southeast Asia are formed and shaped by regional and globalizing forces.

Islam and Changing Gender Realities

Rapidly evolving social, cultural and economic processes are leading to unprecedented changes in the societal roles of men and women. Muslim communities in Southeast Asia are being confronted with a diversity of values and lifestyles expressing multiple definitions of gender roles and relationships not always in line with dominant values. This research area encourages researchers to examine how gender roles in both the public and private sphere are changing for Muslims in Southeast Asia and relate those changes to current theological and political debates.

Islam Values, Economic Activities and Social Responsibilities

Studies in this area should examine how Islamic values and institutions can provide alternative economic options to those perceived as condradictory to Qur`anic principles such as riba. Area of focus could include identifying how Islamic economic values work in a modern business environment, analysis of indigenous entrepreneurial models that have been or can be utilized for local level empowerment and/ or studies of the lives of entrepreneurs and the ways Islamic values shape and are re-shaped by their economic activities and social responsibilities.

Eligibility

Candidates must be nationals of Southeast Asian countries, hold at least a Bachelor degree and should not be over 40 years of age.
Candidates may work in different sectors including academia, media, and non-governmental organizations. Candidate must be highly motivated to deepen their understanding of Islam in the region.
Women are strongly encouraged to apply.

Fellowship Value

The fellowship consists of an average research grant of $5,000 to cover all research costs for a maximum period of six months in the original country of resercher, and funded participation in mentoring workshops.
The Secretariat will arrange for editing, publication and distribution of the report in a "work in progress" series.

Application Procedure

To apply for this fellowship program, candidates need to submit a complete research proposal. Proposed research projects should include sufficient details so that it can be judged for its merit and feasibility.
The candidates can download the application form from our website as a MS Word document. Applications by e-mail are also accepted.

The closing date for application submission is 30 November 2007.

Selection

Final selections will be made by the Advisory board.

Programme Advisory Board

Dr. Carmen Abubakar
Institute of Islamic Studies,
University of the Philippines, Diliman, Q.C.
Metro Manila, Philippines.

Dr. Azyumardi Azra
Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN), Syarif Hidayatullah
Jakarta, Indonesia.

Dr. Suzaina Kadir
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore,
Singapore

M. Abdus Sabur
Asian Muslim Action Network &
Asian Resource Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand

Dr. Chaiwat Satha-Anand
Faculty of Political Science,
Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand

Dr. Alan Feinstein
The Rockefeller Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand

Dr. Shamsul A.B.
Institute of Malay World and Civilization (ATMA) Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia

Program Management

The fellowship program is managed by the AMAN secretariat, which is housed at the Asian Resource Foundation (ARF) in Bangkok, Thailand.
AMAN was established in 1990 with the goal of building understanding and solidarity among Muslims and with other faith communities in Asia towards people`s empowerment, human rights, justice and peace. AMAN`s Council consists of eleven members representing various Asian countries, with Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer of the center for study of society and secularism, India as chairman.
Financial support to the fellowship program is provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, Southeast Asia Regional Office Bangkok, Thailand.

Secretariat

Dwi Rubiyanti Kholifah - Program Coordinator
Contact Address
Islam in Southeast Asia: A View from Within
Research Fellowship Programme
AMAN/ARF
House 1562/113, Soi 1/1
Mooban Pibul, Pracharaj Road,
Bangkok 10800, Thailand
Tel: 66-2-9130196,
Fax: 66-2-9130197
E-mail: aman@arf-asia.org

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PhD Studentship in Ionic Liquids Research - Queen's University Belfast

PhD Studentship QUILL Research Centre School of Chemistry and Chemical
Engineering

Applications are invited for a research studentship at the QUILL Research
Centre based in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen's
University Belfast.

This project offers an exciting opportunity to work in the world-leading
centre for ionic liquids research. The 3 year doctoral studentship (funded
by Cytec Speciality Chemicals, a North American based company) will provide
a maintenance grant and cover all approved tuition fees.

The research work will be carried out in the QUILL Research Centre and will
be on the syntheses and elaboration of structure/property relationships of
phosphonium- based ionic liquids.

*Eligibility & How to Apply:*
We invite applications from potential UK, EU and International students who
have a 2.1 or above Bachelors degree in Chemistry. An interest in synthetic
chemistry is essential.

Applications should be made in the form of a CV (with a minimum of 2
references) and covering letter and sent to Dr. Sarah Thompson, QUILL
Centre, School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, David Keir Building,
Stranmillis Road, Belfast, BT9 5AG. Or submitted via e-mail to
sarah.thompson@ qub.ac.uk

For further details on eligibility for funding and useful information for
prospective research students please read the information at
http://www.qub. ac.uk/postgradua te.

*The closing date for applications is Friday 16th November 2007*

The successful candidates will be expected to take up the studentship in
January 2008 (or possibly earlier if mutually convenient).

*Further information:
*For further information on the QUILL Centre http://quill. qub.ac.uk
For general enquiries please contact Sarah Thompson (
sarah.thompson@ qub.ac.uk ) at tel +44 (0)28 90 975600.

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Beasiswa - Asian Youth Fellowship

The Japan Foundation offers scholarship to study the Japanese language for Asian students, who wish to study at graduate schools in Japan and have a strong wish to contribute to regional cooperation after obtaining a Master or Ph. D Degree.

Please read Asian Youth Fellowship Information for 2007

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Beasiswa - PhD in Computer Science, UNiversity of Jena, Germany

website link:
http://www.drarbeit .de/drarbeit/ php/arch_ get.php?angebot= nr3484

The Institute of Computer Science at the
University of Jena, Germany
offers a vacancy for a full-time PhD student
at the Heinz-Nixdorf Endowed Chair of Practical Computer Science

The work will focus on the application of adaptation techniques to Web
Portals.

The research group has broad experience within the area of Web Portal
technology and recently contributed to the JSR 286 standard (Apache
Pluto Project - Java Portlet Specification) and developed its
reference implementation in conjunction with the IBM Research and
Development Laboratories at Böblingen, Germany. A second, relevant
focus is on semantic description of resources and context-adaptabilil ity.

The PhD research will be performed under the guidance of Prof. Dr.
Birgitta König-Ries and Prof. Dr. Martin Welsch in cooperation with
the IBM Research and Development Laboratories at Böblingen, Germany.

The aim of the project is to perform research and develop prototypes
that apply adaptation techniques specifically to modern Web Portals in
order to come to a solution that we currently call a Contextual
Portal, a Portal being more semantic- and context-aware, i.e. a Portal
that exploits information available in the computing environment to
react to changing context with the aim to adapt itself to these
changes to better suit the new circumstances, the new requirements

Project description:

Recognizing the value of internet technologies, companies started to
establish intranets to provide their employees with a central point of
access to enterprise specific information. Initially, intranets
focused on presenting the most valuable and widely used information to
employees providing them with quick and efficient information access.
But the amount of information accessible via those intranets quickly
grew and finding the right information became more complex and time
consuming.

Many companies successfully introduced Web Portals to manage the
upcoming information overflow. Web Portals provide users with a
central point of access in a highly personalized manner. They allow
providing information and applications based on the role of a user
within the enterprise. Understanding the role of a given user and his
information needs allows efficient targeting of the content. Today,
Web Portals are comprised of a huge amount of content. They have grown
tremendously and again it becomes more time consuming to find and
access the right information throughout a particular context.
Information overflow is becoming a productivity threat again and users
once more fear to get lost in hyperspace.

Contextual Portals propagate the next generation of Web Portals. The
goal is to come to a more adaptive, adaptable, dynamic and
context-aware type of Web Portals, where the main idea is to overcome
drawbacks of static Web Portals, mainly by taking into account which
context a user is acting in and by learning from a user's behavior in
order to make assumptions about his potential behavior throughout
future sessions. The aim is to let the system self-adapt to better
suit users' needs - in order to better support their typical behavior
and to better manage information overflow.

The new concepts then aim to improve certain selected aspects of Web
Portals: the presentation of the navigation, the presentation of the
page layout, the way in which contextual information is exchanged
across applications and across pages, the way in which users are
notified about context-changes and the mechanisms that allow single
users to have multiple (behavior) profiles.

A context adaptive Portal collects knowledge during users' interaction
with the Portal, filters and stores the collected knowledge and
finally makes use of it and additional context information during
future sessions in order to adapt the Portal to better suit users
needs. It improves supporting users' typical behavior by taking into
account contextual information and by learning from a user's previous
behavior.

The PhD research focuses on the definition of a declarative language
and ontological models for semantically describing adaptable portal
components, user behavior and contextual information. Proper reasoning
on these models should allow for meaningful adaptation options.

Requirements:

We are looking for a candidate who meets the following requirements:

- An excellent Masters or equivalent degree in Computer Science or a
closely related field
- Experience within the fields of adaptive hypertext and hypermedia,
information systems, context modeling, user modeling, data mining,
semantic web, artificial intelligence and machine learning and/or Web
Portal technology are of advantage
- Very good programming and software engineering skills
- Very good communicative skills in English, both in speaking and in
writing
- Skills in German are of advantage

We expect dedication, enthusiasm and the willingness to solve
difficult problems.

Employment:

- Full time employment at the University of Jena for initially two
years (with the option to extend)
- Salary according to TV-L 13 (about 1700 Euros/month take home amount)

Information:

Project/technical information:
Andreas Nauerz
IBM Research and Development
Schönaicher Str. 220
71032 Böblingen

phone: +49(0)7031-16- 1777,
e-mail: andreas.nauerz[ at]de.ibm. com

Application/ organizational information:

Prof. Dr. Birgitta König-Ries
Institut für Informatik
Friedrich-Schiller- Universitä t Jena
Ernst-Abbe-Platz 1-4
Raum 3311
07743 Jena
Germany

phone: +49(0)3641-946430
mail: koenig[at]informati k.uni-jena. de

or

Prof. Dr. Martin Welsch
IBM Research and Development
Schönaicher Str. 220
71032 Böblingen
Germany

phone: +49(0)7031-16- 2216,
e-mail: martin.welsch[ at]de.ibm. com

Application:

Interested candidates are requested to send their application by
November 05, 2007 to:

Prof. Dr. Birgitta König-Ries
Institut für Informatik
Friedrich-Schiller- Universitä t Jena
Ernst-Abbe-Platz 1-4
Raum 3311
07743 Jena
Germany

You can also send your application by e-mail to:

koenig[at]informati k.uni-jena. de.
Please cc martin.welsch[ at]de.ibm. com and andreas.nauerz[ at]de.ibm. com.

The application should refer to registration number 62/07 and consist of:
A motivation letter, your Curriculum Vitae, copies of your diplomas
together with the lists of grades, and other relevant certificates and
proof of English language skills (if applicable).
Letters of recommendation are a plus, too.

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