Position filled: Research Fellow

The WZB Ber­lin Social Sci­ence Cen­ter, research unit Global Soci­ology, is seek­ing to appoint one Research Fel­low (f/m/x) within the frame­work of the Cluster of Excel­lence “Con­test­a­tions of the Lib­eral Script” (SCRIPTS). The pos­i­tion entails full­time (39 hours/week) employ­ment for three years, start­ing prefer­ably on 01 August 2022 (sub­ject to approval).

We are hir­ing a post-doc­toral research fel­low to join the pro­ject “Vari­et­ies of Diversity Scripts,” led by Prof. Yasemin Soysal (WZB), Prof. Gülay Çağlar (Freie Uni­versität), and Prof. Kath­rin Zip­pel (Freie Uni­versität). The­or­et­ic­ally, the pro­ject invest­ig­ates the rela­tion­ship and ten­sions between equal­ity, mer­ito­cracy, and diversity. Empir­ic­ally, it aims to identify and map cross-national dif­fu­sion and pat­terns of diversity scripts as con­veyed in uni­versit­ies’ offi­cial web­sites and doc­u­ments, com­ple­men­ted by in-depth case stud­ies of selec­ted uni­versit­ies. We are seek­ing applic­ants with research interests in global dif­fu­sion of ideas and insti­tu­tions, higher edu­ca­tion, sci­ence, mer­ito­cracy, and diversity.

The pos­i­tion is embed­ded within the Global Soci­ology unit (led by Yasemin Soysal) at the WZB Ber­lin Social Sci­ence Cen­ter, which is a pub­licly fin­anced research insti­tu­tion that con­ducts the­ory-based and prob­lem-ori­ented social sci­ence research (http://www.wzb.eu/en). The Global Soci­ology research unit is also part of the Cluster of Excel­lence “Con­test­a­tions of the Lib­eral Scripts” (SCRIPTS), which ana­lyses the con­tem­por­ary con­tro­ver­sies about the lib­eral order from a his­tor­ical, global, and com­par­at­ive per­spect­ive (http://www.scripts-berlin.eu).

Your tasks

• Con­trib­ut­ing con­cep­tu­ally and empir­ic­ally to the inter­dis­cip­lin­ary study of global pro­cesses of the dif­fu­sion of mod­els and stand­ards
• Design­ing and imple­ment­ing quant­it­at­ive and com­par­at­ive ana­lyses in this field
• Tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for design­ing and con­duct­ing ana­lyses of the data scraped from uni­versity webpages
• Pub­lish­ing empir­ic­ally groun­ded research, partly together with Pro­fess­ors Soysal, Çağlar, and Zip­pel, prefer­ably in inter­na­tional, peer-reviewed journ­als
• Col­lab­or­at­ing in design­ing and draft­ing research pro­pos­als for fur­ther fund­ing

Requirements

• A doc­toral degree in Soci­ology or a related social sci­ence dis­cip­line with know­ledge of or interest in one or more of the fol­low­ing (inter­dis­cip­lin­ary) research areas: sci­ence and know­ledge soci­ety, higher edu­ca­tion, the dif­fu­sion of ideas and insti­tu­tions, and glob­al­iz­a­tion
• Pro­found know­ledge and exper­i­ence of quant­it­at­ive meth­ods and com­pu­ta­tional social sci­ences
• Com­pet­ence in data visu­al­iz­a­tion and present­a­tion tools (e.g. R, Python, etc.)
• Com­pet­ence in com­pil­a­tion of reports for non-aca­demic audi­ence and media out­lets
• Com­pet­ence in data and team man­age­ment, as well as organ­iz­a­tional and com­mu­nic­a­tion skills
• Excel­lent com­mand of writ­ten and spoken Eng­lish, and prefer­ably an addi­tional lan­guage (Urdu, Turk­ish, Ger­man, etc.)

What we offer

• Remu­ner­a­tion in accord­ance with EG 13 TVöD Bund (in accord­ance with Ger­man Wage Agree­ment for Pub­lic Ser­vice)
• A well-equipped work­place in the centre of Ber­lin
• An inter­na­tional, cooper­at­ive, and diver­si­fied work­ing envir­on­ment
• Integ­ra­tion into the sci­entific com­munity in the form of col­loquia and con­fer­ences, and the pos­sib­il­ity to teach courses at uni­versit­ies in Ber­lin
• Research sup­port by stu­dent assist­ants, fund­ing for con­fer­ence travels, and oppor­tun­it­ies for pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment
• Flex­ible work­ing hours
• We pro­mote a good work-life bal­ance, and our engage­ment has been cer­ti­fied by audit work­and­fam­ily and the European Com­mis­sion’s Human Resources Strategy for Research­ers (HRS4R)
• Com­pre­hens­ive pro­gram for con­tinu­ous pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment and fur­ther qual­i­fic­a­tion, in the own dis­cip­line and bey­ond
• Cafet­eria with mod­ern recre­ation rooms
• Dis­coun­ted VBB com­pany ticket

How to apply

Equally well-qual­i­fied applic­ants with dis­ab­il­it­ies will be given pref­er­ence. We value diversity and wel­come all applic­a­tions regard­less of gender, nation­al­ity, eth­nic or social ori­gin, reli­gion, dis­ab­il­ity, age, or sexual ori­ent­a­tion. The WZB expli­citly encour­ages women and per­sons with a migrant back­ground to apply.

If you have any ques­tions, please con­tact Lina Hayek at lina.hayek@wzb.eu.

Please send us your online applic­a­tion in Eng­lish (con­sist­ing of a let­ter of motiv­a­tion, includ­ing a detailed descrip­tion of how your back­ground, expert­ise, and exper­i­ences fit with the advert­ised pos­i­tion; a cur­riculum vitae; a list of pub­lic­a­tions; a writ­ing sample; cop­ies of rel­ev­ant cer­ti­fic­ates; and your PhD cer­ti­fic­ate – the doc­toral thesis is expec­ted to have been at least sub­mit­ted by the start of the pos­i­tion) by no later than 09 June 2022.