Career Center

General Description

OVERVIEW

The SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University is seeking to hire a qualified Postdoctoral Fellow for a project we are doing in partnership with More In Common. The Postdoctoral Fellow will be hired for a period beginning ASAP and going through the summer of 2023 to collaborate on research projects pertaining to democratic revitalization, collective settings, pluralism and collective action.

The position requires someone with a strong background in political science, civic studies, sociology or any of other fields related to collective action, democracy studies, and pluralism. Applicants should have a PhD (or expect to complete theirs by Spring 2022) in a relevant social science field from an accredited institution and a record of being an outstanding scholar. Postdoctoral Fellows will be exempt from teaching and service duties and will devote their full-time effort to working on research. The expectation is that the fellow's time will be divided between working on the research project described below and building out their own research.  

RESEARCH

The Postdoctoral Fellow is expected to be involved and lead parts of the collaboration between the SNF Agora Institute and More in Common. The aim of this research is to develop a multidisciplinary paradigm for understanding how collective settings influence people's ability to come together across lines of difference to solve public problems; in other words, people's ability to engage in the core work of a functioning democracy. By collective settings (or contexts) we mean the myriad places (physical, digital, and organizations/groups) where people gather to engage in public action. Prior research has shown that such settings can be carriers of authoritarianism or democracy, and so we hope to articulate a framework for how to build effective, self-governing democratic settings that can be used by practitioners.  

The postdoctoral fellow's responsibilities will include working with leading academics, public thinkers, and researchers to scope the project; conducting a research scan of existing work and synthesizing the notes and insights to identify a suite of case studies (or other empirical data) to help develop the framework; developing two or three case studies (or gathering relevant data); and then leading the team in producing a summative publication that synthesizes the entire arc of work. 

TERM OF APPOINTMENT

The term of appointment is for 12-18 months, beginning as soon as possible in 2022 and extending until the summer of 2023. Applicants will receive a small research budget that they can use at their discretion, and will have a separate budget to cover the cost of travel and research for the project. Currently, we do not have funding to extend the post-doc beyond the summer of 2023. Applicants can work remotely from anywhere in the United States, but must be willing to use some of their travel funds to travel regularly to meet with the principal investigators on the project. John Hopkins University offers a competitive salary and employee benefits.

Qualifications

• The position requires someone with a strong background in political science, civic studies, sociology or any of other fields related to collective action, democracy studies, and pluralism.
• Applicants should have a PhD (or expect to complete theirs by Spring 2022) in a relevant social science field from an accredited institution and a record of being an outstanding scholar.

Application Instructions

A complete application will include the following materials:

• Current curriculum vitae;
• Statement of research interests;
• A representative manuscript or publication (please note that to the extent possible, this should be a single-authored piece. Excellent writing skills are a must and we would like to be able to review people's writing style);
• Contact information for two referees, who will be asked to comment specifically on your qualifications for the proposed project. Referees will be contacted directly by email with instructions for uploading letters.

For full consideration, applicants are invited to submit their materials by February 25th, 2022. The position will remain open until filled, however, so applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.