진학프로석·박사 채용 접수 플랫폼

The Department of Social Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main has an opening for a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Comparative Political Science (Prof. Dr. Julian Garritzmann) to start on 01.01.2026 (or at the earliest possible date).

Postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project “The Politics of the Latent Educational Cleavage” (POLEDUC)

The position is fixed-term for 56 months. The salary grade is based on the job characteristics of the collective agreement (TV-G-U) applicable to the Goethe University.

Responsibilities: We are looking to hire an outstanding postdoctoral political scientist (or other social scientist with the relevant expertise and skills) for the research project “The Politics of the Latent Educational Cleavage” (POLEDUC), funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant. The project investigates whether and to what extent politics is increasingly structured by an educational cleavage, why this happens and what consequences this has. Various work packages analyze this at the micro-, the meso-, and the macro-level using quantitative, experimental, and qualitative analyses.

The tasks of the advertised position are to study the role of collective political actors (such as political parties) in these dynamics, using modern state-of-the-art computer-assisted text analysis, especially Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs). We want to better understand the role of political actors in the emergence of the educational cleavage, using qualitative and especially quantitative text analysis approaches. Applicants should thus have experience and a proven track-record of applying quantitative state-of-the-art text analysis approaches. Ideally, applicants also have experience in automatized data collection processes (e.g. web scraping) and in validation and finetuning models. The resulting research should be published in internationally visible peer-reviewed journals - a joint book project is also planned.

The main focus of the position is on research in the ERC project. However, the position also comes with a small teaching obligation: you are expected to offer a total of 4 seminars within the 5 years of the project (i.e. slightly less than one seminar per year). You will be free to choose the topic of the seminars in the field of comparative politics / applied methods. The position thus offers a strong research environment and at the same time the opportunity to gain or expand teaching experience. Goethe University also offers a range of didactical training to improve one’s skills as an educator.

You also receive the opportunity and strong support to conduct your own, independent research. You will be part of an inclusive, motivated, inspiring, and international team and will have the opportunity to participate in various formats and activities, e.g. our research colloquia and workshops, as well as a discussion and reading group where we as a team regularly discuss our own and other state-of-the-art research. You are of course also cordially invited to all other formats of the institute and department, to various workshops and other opportunities.

Environment: The Department of Social Sciences at Goethe University is one of the largest in Europe, hosting more than 40 full professors and their respective teams. There is a dense interdisciplinary exchange between political science and sociology, e.g. at the Institute for Empirical-Analytical Research (InFER). In addition, the GRADE (Post)Graduate Academy and other institutions provide excellent support for earlycareer researchers. It also deserves mentioning that the university and department are currently building a strong research focus on quantitative text analysis approaches, not least in the Center for Critical Computation Studies. The academic environment is therefore ideal. In addition, not only the campus with its modern buildings, green spaces, and parks is impressive, but also Frankfurt as an international hub and vibrant metropolis “in the heart of Europe”.

Requirements for employment are an above-average academic university degree (Master's or comparable) and an outstanding, completed or soon-to-be-completed doctorate in the field of social sciences, ideally in political science, political sociology, or political economy. We welcome a substantive focus on political behavior research, political sociology, politics of education, public opinion and/or party politics. Moreover, you have excellent knowledge and training in comparative political science and in empirical social science research, especially in quantitative state-of-the-art text analysis approaches (e.g. text-as-data approaches, computational social science methods, NLPs, LLMs, potentially also webscraping). Solid knowledge of experimental methods, causal inference designs, and counterfactual perspectives is welcome. Applicants should also have excellent verbal and written language skills in English; knowledge of German is not required, but a plus.

Please send applications (in German or English) with the following documents: (1) motivational cover letter also indicating your research interests in the context of the ERC project, (2) CV including (if applicable) a list of publications, (3) a writing sample (if possible a singleauthored or first-authored paper) (4) copies of your MA & (if applicable) PhD certificates, (5) teaching evaluations, if applicable. Please submit these documents electronically in a single PDF file by 15.09.2025, quoting the reference number 15/2025, to the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Goethe University. E-Mail address: dekanat.fb03-bewerbungen@soz.uni-frankfurt.de. For any substantive questions regarding the project and position please directly address Prof. Dr. Julian Garritzmann (garritzmann@soz.uni-frankfurt.de). An overview of the project and other research projects of the professorship can be found at: https://sites.google.com/site/juliangarritzmann/home