Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Quantitative Political Science (TRUST-D Project)

About the Role      

The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will work with Prof Petra Schleiter on the externally funded Trust, Participation, and Democratic Resilience (TRUST-D) project, which examines whether participatory innovations such as participatory budgeting, citizens' assemblies, and mini-publics strengthen long-term political trust.

The Fellow will lead quantitative analyses using advanced causal inference methods, including regression discontinuity designs, difference-in-differences, event study, instrumental variable, and related approaches. The role involves working with large-scale administrative, electoral, and survey datasets, including Polish participatory budgeting and local government data; and linking European comparative datasets such as the OECD Deliberative Democracy Database. European Social Survey data; and regional (NUTS-3 level) administrative data and indicators of political trust and participation.

The Fellow will work closely with the PI and project collaborators on publications, conference presentations, policy briefs, and stakeholder engagement activities. They will be part of a vibrant community of researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students based at the Centre for Democratic Resilience (CeDR) in the Department of Politics and International Relations.

About You

You will lead, develop and implement rigorous quantitative research designs to identify the causal effects of participatory innovations on political trust and democratic resilience. You will assemble, merge, manage and analyse complex administrative, electoral and survey datasets, and estimate and evaluate advanced statistical models using methods including difference-in-differences, event studies, regression discontinuity designs, instrumental variables and panel-data approaches. You will also conduct robustness, placebo, sensitivity and pre-trend analyses.

You will contribute to the development of the project's theoretical framework and hypotheses concerning participatory innovations and political trust. Working closely with the PI and project collaborators, you will contribute to research dissemination through conference presentations, publications, policy briefs, and the preparation of replication datasets and code.

The successful candidate will support engagement with policymakers, practitioners and civil society stakeholders, while also contributing to the administration of the project, including grant applications and workshop and conference organisation. You will manage your own research activities and workload effectively within the overall project framework.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to join a vibrant community of researchers, postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students based at the Centre for Democratic Resilience (CeDR) and contribute to research on political trust and democratic resilience.

This position is a full-time, fixed term position available for 30 months from 16th November or as soon as possible thereafter.

If you have any questions about the role, please contact the DPIR HR Team at vacancies@politics.ox.ac.uk.

All enquiries will be treated in strict confidence and will not form part of the selection decision.

Application Process

Applications for this vacancy are to be made online via the University’s job pages. You will be required to upload a recent CV and supporting statement as part of your online application. 

Only applications received before 12 noon (UK time) on Friday 23rd October can be considered. Please quote reference 188934 in all correspondence. Further information on the application process can be found here: How to apply | Oxford University

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