Researcher in Political Science (SDC-29)

The department „Survey Data Curation“ processes and prepares social science research data across a diverse range of data types to support sociological and political science research, especially in comparative perspectives across space and time. The curated data include long-running national (e.g., ALLBUS, GLES) and international (e.g., ISSP, CSES) survey programs, which are documented and curated to the highest quality standards, but also research data products derived from or connected to these surveys, such as geo referencing services or trend files. In the project “Next-Generation Citizen Councils for Revitalizing Democracy at the Community Level” (NexCiCo+), funded by VolkswagenStiftung, we investigate the potential of deliberative mini-publics to increase democratic resilience in the wider population with field experiments.

• Implementing full-population, three-wave panel surveys in three German municipalities, including questionnaire development, survey programming, invitation of respondents, panel management, and data cleaning
• Coordinating with our project partners Initiative Offene Gesellschaft and University of Mannheim in implementing a citizen council as experimental intervention
• Conducting related research aimed at international scientific outlets; opportunity to pursue a PhD degree 
• Presentation of results at national and international conferences

• MA degree or higher in political science or a similar field with training in quantitative methods
• Strong interest in democratic innovations and field experiments
• Experience in implementing surveys, especially with LimeSurvey, is an advantage
• Skills in the statistical software R are an advantage
• Very good German and English language skills

• Opportunity to contribute to a real-world democracy experiment with rigorous causal inference
• Work in an integrated yet flexible team of quantitative social scientists with substantial synergies between survey augmentation projects specializing in geospatial data applications and democracy
• Flexible working hours and regulations for mobile working
• Very good conditions for reconciling work and family life, e.g. subsidies for childcare for children who have not yet attained the age of compulsory schooling
• Holistic company health management and discounted participation in the university's sports programme 
• Generous support for your pension provision as a direct insurance policy
• Promotion of your skills through further training measures