3-year Postdoc in Computational Social Science

The Department of Political Science at Aarhus University invites applications for a three-year full-time postdoctoral researcher to join a new ERC-funded research project on youth and their conceptions of political power. The project is headed by Associate Professor Kristina Bakkær Simonsen with whom the postdoc will be working closely together.

The starting date is flexible and subject to mutual agreement but expected to be between September 2025 and February 2026. 

The research project
Political marginalization, understood as the systematic underrepresentation of social groups in political office, is a major democratic problem. To understand its entrenched, structural nature, the YOPOW project will examine how societal norms take root already early in life and give rise to biased beliefs about who is fit for power. We will first document the messages young people receive about political power in school materials, children’s news media, and politicians’ social media. Next, we will examine young people’s beliefs about what political power is, who can hold it, and how it can be exercised. Finally, we will zoom in on the early experiences with political power of politically interested youth, and how these experiences are likely to teach them unequal lessons.

The project will focus on three dimensions of marginalization: gender, ethnic minority/majority status, and socio-economic background and compare three societies—Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands—that vary in terms of political representation on these dimensions. Methodologically, the project combines computational social science tools and in-depth interpretation of text and image/video data to establish patterns in messages, beliefs, and experiences.

This is the first position in the YOPOW research project, which will run for five years, from August 2025 until July 2030. Together with Associate Professor Kristina Bakkær Simonsen, the postdoc will lay the groundwork for conceptualizing and identifying patterns in messages and experiences. Later in 2026, two additional postdoctoral researchers as well as research assistants will join the team to examine young people’s beliefs about political power with the use of story-telling interviews. The project is funded by an ERC Starting Grant, the flagship funding programme of the European Union, which supports frontier, cutting-edge research. Read more about the project here in an interview with research leader Kristina Bakkær Simonsen.   

Job description

The postdoctoral researcher is expected to engage in collaborative research with Associate Professor Kristina Bakkær Simonsen and other project team members as they begin to join the project. The postdoc is envisioned a leading role in developing, designing, and coordinating studies to document messages about and experiences with political power from the perspective of young people. The methodological emphasis of the position is on computational social science tools to document patterns in text and images.

The project aims to deliver high-quality research with scholarly and societal impact, and the postdoc should be motivated to contribute to this ambition. Because of the methodological span of the project—ranging from large-scale, computational analysis to in-depth, qualitative interpretation—the successful candidate is expected to be openminded, intellectually curious, and respectful of different approaches to knowledge generation.

While research will primarily be carried out in collaboration with other project members, there are opportunities to pursue independent work within the overall focus of the project. The project offers significant funding for data collection, research assistance, travel, and workshops. The successful applicant will become part of an exciting and ambitious research project and a supportive research team with a collegial and respectful atmosphere. There will be excellent opportunities for intellectual development and mentoring, with a focus on how the candidate can make use of the postdoctoral position to develop their career.

In addition to the outlined research tasks, the position implies modest teaching obligations equivalent to one course per year. If the postdoc is interested, a one-year further extension in return for additional teaching might be negotiable (to be decided by the Head of Department), depending on the candidate’s prior teaching experience and the department’s need for teaching during the period of employment. Salary is according to the Danish pay schedule with the possibility to apply for publication bonuses and an annual qualification bonus.