The Department of Political Science at Aarhus University invites applications for a 1 year Research Assistant position to join SLOMODEMO (Slow-Motion Democracy)—an ERC Advanced Grant (project no. 101198983), led by professor Kees van Kersbergen.
 

Start date is preferably 1 January 2026, with flexibility by mutual agreement.
 

The research project

SLOMODEMO studies how accelerating technological, social, and life-pace change (“social acceleration”) pressures liberal democracies’ capacity to solve problems effectively while safeguarding democratic quality—across eight democracies, 2000–2024. The project combines theory-building with comparative datasets and experiments.

 

Job description

You will work with the PI and a student assistant on the work package “Theorizing, Operationalizing, and Measuring Social Acceleration.” The aim is to develop a combined formative–reflective measurement model of social acceleration and build a comprehensive cross-national dataset (2000–2024) capturing technological change, social change, and life-pace change in eight countries.

 

Your responsibilities will include, among other things:

1. Data collection & management: identify indicators in OECD/World Bank and related macro sources; design web scrapers and API pipelines to extend coverage (e.g., technology-adoption series, Google Trends time series); maintain versioned, documented datasets with clear codebooks.
2. Measurement modelling: help design reflective sub-indices of the three dimensions and integrate them into a formative index of social acceleration with multiple indicators/causes.
3. Validation & analysis: build descriptive dashboards, run reliability/sensitivity checks and validation tests for the combined model.
4. Text/natural language processing support: collect government policy documents across countries and set up machine-translation and AI-driven data analyses.

 

We value on-campus collaboration: plan for at least three days per week at the department; short research stays elsewhere can be agreed when useful for the project.
 

Your qualifications

1. Completed MA degree (by the start date) in political science, data science, economics, sociology, computer science, or a related field.
2. Advanced skills in quantitative and computational areas, alongside a keen interest in dataset creation and model measurement.
3. Clear, careful coding and documentation; able to balance speed with reliability.

Examples of relevant skills/tools (appreciated, not must-haves):

1. Programming and data work: R or Python; regular expressions; data wrangling libraries; Structured Query Language (SQL).
2. Web and text data: web scraping; application programming interfaces (APIs); natural language processing (NLP); machine translation.
3. Modelling and measurement: statistical modelling; supervised machine learning; measurement and validation for formative and reflective constructs.
4. Workflow and sharing: Git and GitHub; reproducible environments; clear documentation (readme files and codebooks).
5. Visualisation: plotting libraries (e.g., ggplot2 or Matplotlib) and simple dashboards.

 

What we offer

An active position in developing the essential measurement and data infrastructure for an innovative ERC project, involving collaboration in comparative politics, experiments, and computational social science.

A supportive, collegial environment with student assistant support, data-collection funds, and travel/workshop budgets.

Scope to shape a unique dataset, sharpen advanced natural language processing/machine learning measurement skills, and contribute to publications.
 

The Department of Political Science at Aarhus University

The department is one of Europe’s largest political science environments, with a vibrant research culture and strong methodological communities; we expect active participation in department life.
 

Place of work

Department of Political Science, Bartholins Allé 7, DK-8000 Aarhus C.
 

Further information

Questions about the position or SLOMODEMO: Prof. Kees van Kersbergen – kvk@ps.au.dk.

Questions about the application process: HR-supporter Line Kristiansen - lmkr@au.dk

Publications. Up to three publications may be submitted. In the event of several authors the publications must be accompanied by a co-author statement concerning the applicant's share of the collaborative work with the consent of the co-authors. This template may be used for the purpose.

• Teaching portfolio. The specific requirements regarding the documentation can be found here

Materials which cannot be uploaded together with the application may be submitted in three copies to Aarhus BSS HR & PhD, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 16, DK-8000 Aarhus C.

Read more about how to apply for an academic post at Aarhus BSS here

The evaluation process

After the application deadline, an assessment committee is appointed. Please note that the assessment of applicants is based solely on the material received prior to the application deadline. For further information, see Guidelines for Assessment Committee, Aarhus BSS.
The application must be submitted via Aarhus University’s recruitment system, which can be accessed under the job advertisement on Aarhus University's website.

 

Aarhus University

Aarhus University is an academically diverse and research-intensive university with a strong commitment to high-quality research and education and the development of society nationally and globally. The university offers an inspiring research and teaching environment to its 38,000 students (FTEs) and 8,300 employees, and has an annual revenues of EUR 935 million. Learn more at www.international.au.dk/