Doctoral Researcher in Computational Social Science

GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences is an internationally active research institute, funded by federal and state governments and member of the Leibniz Association.

Starting at the earliest possible date, our Department Computational Social Science (CSS), Team Social Analytics and Services located in Cologne is looking for a
Doctoral Researcher in Computational Social Science

Doctoral Researcher in Computational Social Science

(Salary group 13 TV-L, working time in 75%, limited for four years)

Computational Social Science (CSS) is a new research area that aims to analyze socio-cultural phenomena through new kinds of data and novel technologies. We offer the possibility of pursuing a Ph.D. (externally or internally supervised) while working on exciting research infrastructure projects.

Your tasks will be:

• Contribute to the design and collection of datasets based on digital behavioral data (e.g., social media data, web tracking data, sensor data).
• Contribute to the development of solutions for documenting and sharing digital behavioral data with social scientists who aim to reuse this data.
• Conduct research on the quality of digital behavioral data in an international and interdisciplinary team. Publication of research results as part of your Ph.D.
• Support the open science strategy of GESIS.

Your profile:

• Master’s degree in a field relevant to CSS such as computer science, information science, survey methodology, statistics, or a related empirical social science.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or R.
• Experience in data collection from web platforms (e.g., web scraping, APIs). Additional experience in machine learning, natural language processing or database systems is a plus.
• Interest in open science, data documentation and data quality assessments.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English.

For further information concerning the position, contact Dr. Sebastian Stier via email (sebastian.stier@gesis.org). If you have questions about the application process, please contact Anna Klein via email (anna.klein@gesis.org).