Special Call PhD scholarship on social acceleration and democratic lawmaking

BSS PS Inst. for Statskundskab; Aarhus; On-site; DKK 360,000 - 480,000; Full time

Job summary

The PhD scholarship is part of the ERC-funded SLOMODEMO project at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, focusing on how social acceleration shapes democratic lawmaking.

The successful candidate will conduct an original, comparative, empirical PhD project, collaborate with an international research team, and present findings through seminars and publications.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in political science or closely related field.
• Foundation in quantitative social‑science research design and comparative political analysis.
• Proficiency in R or comparable programming environment with transparent and reproducible data analysis.
• Ability to formulate and carry out an independent PhD project while collaborating closely in a larger research team.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Experience with longitudinal, multilevel, Bayesian, or other advanced quantitative methods relevant to comparative research.
• Experience with measurement of complex political or social concepts and analysis of change over time.
• Experience with automated data collection from databases, APIs, and web sources.
• Computational analysis of multilingual political or legal documents, including machine translation or supervised classification.
• Comparative research on democratic institutions, legislative politics, public policy, political time, or social acceleration.
• Open‑science practices, including transparent documentation, reusable code, validation procedures, and reproducible research outputs.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the research strategy for the PhD project within the SLOMODEMO framework.
• Collaborate closely with the research team and participate in seminars and related activities.
• Develop and justify a focused, original PhD research proposal grounded in comparative empirical work.
• Engage in methodological planning, data sources, measurements, and analyses aligned with the project.
• Attend and contribute to department seminars and international networks.

Skills

Quantitative research design

R programming

English proficiency

Team collaboration

Education

Master's degree in political science or related field

Tools

R

Job description

We invite applications for a PhD scholarship in political science focusing on the relationship between social acceleration and democratic lawmaking. The successful candidate will join the ERC-funded SLOMODEMO project and contribute to cutting‑edge research on democracy in an accelerating society.

The overall research project

The PhD scholarship is part of SLOMODEMO (High Speed Society, Slow Motion Democracy, and the Dilemma for Democratic Problem Solving), a research project funded by the European Research Council and led by Professor Kees van Kersbergen. SLOMODEMO investigates how liberal democracies respond when technological change, social change, and the pace of everyday life accelerate, while democratic procedures remain intentionally deliberative, rule‑bound, and comparatively slow. The project reconceptualises liberal democracy as a problem‑solving system whose legitimacy depends on both democratic procedures and the capacity to address collective problems effectively and in time.

The project combines theory development with comparative measurement, large‑scale data collection, observational analysis, surveys, and experiments. It covers Denmark, Estonia, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, primarily from the 1990s onward. The PhD project will contribute to one of the work packages (WP2, project 2.2, available here), which examines the impact of social acceleration on democratic lawmaking.

The research group

The PhD student will become a member of the SLOMODEMO research group at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. The group brings together researchers working on social acceleration, democratic problem solving, political and legal institutions, public opinion, survey experiments, and computational social science. The PhD student will work closely with the principal investigator and the other researchers in SLOMODEMO, contribute to common project activities and seminars, and take part in the wider research environment of the department.

Job description

The overall research question for the PhD study is: To what extent, under what conditions, and how does social acceleration affect democratic lawmaking?

Applicants are invited to formulate a focused and original PhD project within this broad framework. Themes of particular relevance include the capacity of legislative institutions to keep pace with changing societal demands; institutional variation in legislative adaptation; attempts by political actors to accelerate or reorganise lawmaking; and the consequences of such developments for deliberation, accountability, and democratic problem‑solving capacity. These themes indicate the intellectual scope of the PhD project but do not prescribe particular sub‑research questions or research designs. Applicants are expected to formulate and justify their own focused research questions.

The proposed project must have a clear comparative and empirical orientation and should connect meaningfully to SLOMODEMO’s countries, period, concepts, or data infrastructure. Applicants are free to propose the theoretical argument, research design, data sources, measurements, and analytical methods best suited to their research questions, provided that the project is feasible within a PhD programme of three years and contributes to the objectives of the Work Package (WP2, project 2.2, available here).

Potential empirical materials include legislative and institutional data, legal texts, parliamentary or administrative documents, and other sources suitable for tracing the pace, content, or organisation of lawmaking over time. Relevant approaches include longitudinal quantitative analysis, comparative analysis, automated data collection, and computational text analysis. Applicants should justify their methodological choices rather than attempt to include all these elements.

The PhD project is to be carried out as part of the research project. The PhD student´s role in the research questions listed above will depend on the chosen candidate and his / her own PhD project description related to the topic of the overall project. Hence, you must write a project description on how you would carry out the research within the frames of the overall project.

During the project you will complete a PhD education as described in the rules and regulations for the PhD programme.

Your qualifications

Applicants must have:

• A relevant master’s degree in political science, public policy, sociology, computational social science, data science, or a closely related field, completed before enrolment.
• A foundation in quantitative social‑science research design and comparative political analysis.
• Demonstrable proficiency in R or a comparable programming environment and experience with transparent and reproducible data analysis.
• The ability to formulate and carry out an independent PhD project while collaborating closely in a larger research team.
• Excellent written and spoken English.

Documented experience with one or more of the following will be an advantage:

• Longitudinal, multilevel, Bayesian, or other advanced quantitative methods relevant to comparative research.
• Measurement of complex political or social concepts and analysis of change over time.
• Automated and responsible data collection from databases, APIs, and web sources.
• Computational analysis of multilingual political or legal documents, including machine translation, supervised classification, or validated use of large language models.
• Comparative research on democratic institutions, legislative politics, public policy, political time, or social acceleration.
• Open‑science practices, including transparent documentation, reusable code, validation procedures, and reproducible research outputs.

No applicant is expected to possess all the listed methodological competencies. Familiarity with one or more of the project’s national or legal contexts is an advantage but not required.

The Department and PhD programme

The Department of Political Science at Aarhus University is an internationally oriented research department with strong environments in comparative politics, political institutions, public policy, political behaviour, and advanced quantitative methods. The PhD student will be affiliated with the relevant section and be part of the PhD programme for political science, and will as such follow the ordinary rules and regulations for the programme and have access to the department's seminars, methods training, international networks, and collaborative research activities.

Further information

For further information about the position, please contact Professor Kees van Kersbergen, [e-mail].

If you need help uploading your application or have any questions about the recruitment process, please contact HR Coordinator Mette Fisker Præstegaard, [e-mail].

Place of work

Department of Political Science, Bartholins Allé 7, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.

What do we offer?

• access to renowned researchers and international networks
• an engaging and supportive research environment
• a pathway to a research career or a career in the private or public sector
• We are committed to creating an inclusive environment and recognize diversity as a key asset. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply.

Assessment Criteria

Applications are assessed based on an overall evaluation of the applicant’s qualifications. Particular emphasis is placed on:

• the quality, originality, and relevance of the research proposal
• academic performance in both bachelor’s and master’s degree studies
• The final decision regarding admission is made by the management based on an assessment of both the quality of the proposed project and the applicant’s ability to complete it within the prescribed timeframe.
• Applicants are encouraged to include documentation of their class ranking (e.g. ranking or percentile), as this provides additional context for the assessment. However, this is not a requirement.
• Applicants should document relevant competencies through their master thesis, course papers, research‑assistant work, software or code repositories, replication materials, or comparable outputs.

Framework for the PhD Programme

• The PhD programme is conducted in accordance with the current Danish Ministerial Order on the PhD Programme and the rules and guidelines for PhD students at Aarhus BSS, both of which can be found here.
• It is not essential that your educational background matches the PhD programme exactly. The most important consideration is that your project is academically relevant and can be anchored within the research area of the PhD programme.

Terms of Employment

• If admitted to the 3-year PhD programme, you will also be offered employment in accordance with the Ministerial Order on the Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities (in Danish) and the collective agreement for academics employed by the Danish state (in Danish). The job description and qualification requirements are described in further detail in the Ministerial Order on the Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities.
• Salary and employment terms are governed by the collective agreement for academics employed by the Danish state. You will be appointed as a PhD fellow at base pay level 4–8, depending on your educational background and qualifications.

Aarhus University’s ambition is to be an attractive and inspiring workplace for all and to foster a culture in which each individual has opportunities to thrive, achieve and develop. We view equality and diversity as assets, and we welcome all applicants.

Aarhus University

Aarhus University is an academically diverse and research‑intensive university with a strong commitment to high‑quality research and education and the development of society nationally and globally. The university offers an inspiring research and teaching environment to its 37,000 students (FTEs) and 8,700 employees and has an annual revenue of EUR 1.106 billion.

Learn more at www.international.au.dk/