Postdoc Position in European project on a Linguistic and Visual Analysis

The Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen invites applications for a two-year postdoc position starting on 1 January 2021 or as soon as possible thereafter. The position is heavily weighted in favour of research.

This is an exciting opportunity for a social scientist specializing on visual methods and qualitative analysis to join a new research team that will conduct a large-scale study of European far-right online landscape in 7 countries.

Job description

The PostDoc will collaborate with Associate Professor Nicole Doerr on the research project «Extreme Identities: A Linguistic and Visual Analysis of European Far-Right Online Communities’ Politics of Identity.» ExId will study extreme right wing digital networks combining computer based digital media analysis and qualitative methods of visual analysis. The postdoc will play a crucial role in developing the project’s methodological innovations on qualitative visual social sciences data analysis. The multidisciplinary ExId project team will build a database of the images (pictures, caricatures, etc.) used by far right movements on their online platforms combining qualitative and quantitative visual analysis.

The Research project ExId is funded by the EU’s NORFACE Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age research program and aims at offering a comprehensive analysis of the European far-right online landscape. Using and further developing cutting-edge computational methods complemented by qualitative analysis, the team will identify the many online far-right communities present in 7 European countries, map their relationships, and expose how these communities, through language and visual imagery, make some issues salient and construct particular collective identities. The project runs from 2020 through 2022. Building on the specific yet overlapping strengths of its collaborators in Exeter, Dublin and Copenhagen, the ExId research team will offer a dynamic analysis of both the evolution of the European far-right online landscape, and its linguistic and visual content, exploring phenomena such as the impact of real-world events on websites’ content or circulation of linguistic/visual tropes across groups.

ExID is a collaborative project, and the candidate is expected to work both independently and in collaboration with the multidisciplinary research team to break new ground in the study of visual and computational linguistic social science data analysis of far right online communities and their politics of identity. The main role of the postdoc is to conduct qualitative visual analysis of digital data in cooperating with other team members specializing on collecting and analyzing large digital data sets using computational linguistic and visual analysis.

The postdoc position is a full-time research position and does not involve any teaching obligations. The candidate is also expected take part in the academic life of the Department of Sociology and will be part of the Copenhagen Research Centre on Political Mobilisation and Social Movements. The University of Copenhagen and its Department of Sociology are a hub for multidisciplinary visual social sciences data analysis and research on extremism, also connected to the Copenhagen Centre for Social Data Sciences and the Copenhagen Centre of Political Mobilisation and Social Movement Studies.

Qualifications

To be considered for the position, applicants must have research qualifications at least corresponding to what can be achieved as part of a successfully completed PhD. The ideal candidate will have a PhD in sociology, political science, media and communication, visual art, art history, cultural studies, or related fields. We seek applicants with strong visual methods and experience with qualitative visual social science data analysis. Familiarity with multimodal methods, statistics, or computational text analysis is a plus. We seek candidates with good communication skills in spoken and written English, and an ability to produce state-of-the art social-science research.

For further information about the position, please contact Nicole Doerr (nd@soc.ku.dk). 

For further details about the qualification requirements for postdocs, please refer to the job structure for Academic Staff at Universities 2020: https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2019/1443  (in Danish only)

Salary and conditions of employment

Salary and terms of appointment will be in accordance with an agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC). The annual salary for postdoctoral researchers is within the range DKK 415.000 – 437.000 (EUR 55,000 – 57,900 app.). The University will also pay a monthly contribution to your pension fund corresponding to 17.1 % of your salary. Negotiation for additional supplements will be possible.

An agreement between The Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC) makes it possible for international researchers employed by the University to achieve a pension exemption, whereby the pension contribution will be paid out as salary. For more information about the different pension schemes, please see https://ism.ku.dk/salary-tax-pension/. A special tax scheme is offered to researchers recruited abroad, https://ism.ku.dk/salary-tax-pension/

If you consider applying from abroad, you may find useful information on how it is to work in Denmark and at UCPH here: http://ism.ku.dk ​​http://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-us/frontpage.htm and https://www.workindenmark.dk

Application

The application should be in English and must include the following enclosures:

• Cover letter (max 2 pages). The cover letter should specify how the applicant’s qualifications and experiences match the project’s focus on studying visual images and materials using qualitative data.
• Curriculum vitae (with the applicant’s email & telephone number)
• Documentation of qualifications (examination certificates/PhD diploma, etc.).
• Complete list of publications. The enclosed publications must be marked with*.
• Publications. Applicants may choose a maximum of three publications for assessment and the PhD thesis (if applicable). The selected publications must be uploaded as attachments. Should any of the submitted publications consist of work with named co-authors, or work that is otherwise the result of collective academic endeavours, the extent of the applicant’s contribution to the work must be clearly stipulated. The Faculty may ask for a signed statement from the co-authors stipulating the extent and nature of each individual’s contribution.

Application procedure

After the application deadline, the Head of department selects applicants for assessment on the advice of the Appointment Committee.  All applicants are notified whether their application has been accepted for assessment. The Head of department subsequently appoints an expert assessment committee tasked with carrying out an assessment of the selected applicants for the specific post. Selected applicants are notified of the composition of the committee and each applicant has the opportunity to comment on the part of the assessment that relates to the applicant.

The University of Copenhagen encourages everyone interested in this post to apply, regardless of personal background.

Further information about the application procedure is available from HR South City, e-mail: hrsc@hrsc.ku.dk, please refer to ID 211-0464/20-2I.

Please note: Applications must be submitted and documents must be uploaded online not later than October 1, 2020. Press “Apply now” and fill in the application form.

Applications received after deadline will not be taken into account.