Research Associate for the Project “Which Public Sphere System for Democracy? – PSS4DEMOCRACY” (Postdoc) § 28 Subsection 3 HmbHG
Institution: Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, Department of Social Sciences, Journalism and Communication Studies, Digital Journalism
Salary level: EGR. 13 TV-L
Start date: 01.05.2026 pending approval of external funding, fixed until 30.04.2029 (This is a fixed-term contract in accordance with Section 2 of the academic fixed-term labor contract act [Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, WissZeitVG]).
Application deadline: 2026-02-05
Scope of work: full-time position suitable for part-time
Your responsibilities
Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.
This project introduces a fundamentally new way of studying the public sphere by designing and testing models of algorithmic news supply that translate normative democratic ideals into experimentally observable news environments. More information on the project is available at:
Public Spheres for Democracy : Journalism and Communication Studies, esp. Digital Journalism
As Postdoctoral Researcher, you are responsible for the computational core of the project: translating public sphere theory into operational algorithmic news recommender systems as follows:
NLP-based News Content Metrics
- implement and refine Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to operationalize public sphere concepts in political news
- develop and validate content-based metrics (e.g. party visibility, viewpoint diversity, emotionalization intensity) using multilingual news corpora
- integrate entity linking, stance detection, sentiment/emotion analysis, and topic modeling into a framework
- collaborate with PhD and other researchers to validate automated metrics against manual content analysis
News Recommender System (NRS) Development
- develop multi-objective ranking and scoring mechanisms that combine NLP-based metrics with user metrics
- implement and optimize Pareto-based and reinforcement learning approaches (e.g. Deep Pareto Reinforcement Learning) to balance competing public-sphere objectives
- build and maintain the NRS pipeline that produces distinct user news feeds for subsequent testing
- evaluate recommender performance using standard metrics
- present results at international workshops, conferences, and lead as well as contribute to publications in academic journals
Collaboration & Project Coordination
- work closely with an interdisciplinary team
- support and take over responsibility in project coordination
Your profile
A university degree in a relevant field, plus doctorate.
You are a postdoctoral researcher with strong computational expertise and an interest in normative, diversity-aware algorithmic systems.
Required Qualifications
- completed PhD in Computer Science, Computational Social Science, Information Systems, or a closely related field
- strong experience with recommender systems, machine learning, or algorithmic ranking
- solid expertise in Python and relevant ML/NLP libraries
- experience working with large-scale textual data and multilingual corpora
- proven ability to design reproducible computational pipelines
- excellent command of English (written and spoken)
Desirable
- experience with NLP applied to news or political text
- familiarity with multi-objective optimization, fairness-aware algorithms, or reinforcement learning
- interest in public sphere theory, journalism, or democratic implications of AI systems
- experience working in interdisciplinary research teams
- command of German (written and spoken)
- Polish or Norwegian language skills are a plus
We offer
Additional benefits:
- a key role in a flagship ERC Consolidator Grant at the intersection of AI, journalism, and democracy
- structured collaboration with experts of University of Hamburg Hub of Computing and Data Science (HCDS)
- intellectual freedom to develop theory-informed algorithmic systems
- access to excellent computational infrastructure
- strong support for high-impact publications, open science, and international visibility
- a stimulating interdisciplinary research environment
Universität Hamburg—University of Excellence is one of the strongest research educational institutions in Germany. Our work in research, teaching, educational and knowledge exchange activities is fostering the next generation of responsible global citizens ready to tackle the global challenges facing us. Our guiding principle “Innovating and Cooperating for a Sustainable Future in a digital age” drives collaboration with academic and nonacademic partner institutions in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region and around the world. We would like to invite you to be part of our community to work with us in creating sustainable and digital change for a dynamic and pluralist society.
The University of Hamburg is committed to equity. Diversity enriches our university life, whether in our studies, research, teaching, education, or workplace. We therefore welcome all applications, regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnic or social background, age, religion or belief, disability, or chronic illness.
The University of Hamburg strives to increase the number of women in academia, and encourages qualified female academics to apply.Severely disabled and disabled applicants with the same status will receive preference over equally qualified non-disabled applicants.
Instructions for applying
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Application deadline
Use only the online application form to submit your application with the following documents:
- cover letter
- CV
- copies of degree certificate(s)
If you experience technical problems, send an email to bewerbungen@uni-hamburg.de.
More information on data protection in selection procedures.
