Research Assistant

The Department III of the University of Trier, Chair of Empirical Democracy Research (JProf. Dr. Theres Matthieß), is seeking for a period for three years, starting at the earliest possible date (preferably on 01.06.2022),

a research assistant (m/f/d)
with 65% of regular weekly working time
(Remuneration Group TVL - 13)

to join the DFG- and ANR-funded third-party project "Unequal mandate responsiveness? How electoral promises and their realizations target groups in France and Germany" (UNEQUALMAND).

UNEQUALMAND examines political (in-)equality in France and Germany through the lens of group representation, with a focus on mandates and their realization in the form of policies. The project looks
at the supply as well as the demand-side of political competition. How do pledges and fulfilled policies appeal to groups with different characteristics? How, and under which conditions, do citizens respond to group targeting in electoral manifestos (prospectively) and pledge fulfillment (retrospectively)? These questions will be addressed using an innovative research design that combines data on electoral promises, surveys, experimental designs, and case-studies. The project is based at the University of Trier, University of Stuttgart, and Sciences Po.

The tasks include:

• Training and supervising coders;
• Data management: cleaning, merging, and publishing of data sets;
• Assisting in creating surveys and conducting automated text analyses;
• Supporting the organization of team meetings and workshops;
• Assisting with reports and publications of the project.

The research assistant will also have the opportunity to pursue a doctoral project.

Requirements:

• A master's degree in political science or a related discipline;
• Interest in research on representation, party competition, voting, and political inequality;
• Solid knowledge of methods in the social sciences and statistical software (e.g., R, Stata, or SPSS, if no knowledge of R: willingness to learn R);
• Ability to work both in a team and independently;
• Very good knowledge of German and English.

Desirable, but not required:

• Knowledge of French;
• Experience performing text analysis (manual and/or automated);
• Familiarity with creating surveys and/or experiments;
• Knowledge of LaTeX and Git.

Applications should be sent exclusively by e-mail as a single pdf-document with the usual documents (CV, letter of motivation, outline of ideas for the doctoral project (max. 2 pages), and relevant
certificates) by 03.04.2022 to Pia Schweinsberger, Universität Trier, FB III – Politikwissenschaft, 54286 Trier, schweinsberg@uni-trier.de. If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to Pia
Schweinsberger or JProf. Dr. Matthieß (matthiesst@uni-trier.de).