Postdoc: Agent-Based Modelling of Social Energy Transition

RUG; Groningen; On-site; EUR 41,000 - 51,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary 3706–4599 EUR gross monthly

232 vacation hours per year

8.3% end-of-year bonus and 8% holiday—

Professional development opportunities

Fixed-term contract 1.0 FTE for 3years

Job summary

The University of Groningen invites applications for a Postdoctoral researcher to study social dynamics in the energy transition using agent-based modelling. The project is part of ECHO and involves collaboration between the Department of Sociology, RUG, and the Institute of Energy Informatics at Oldenburg.

The successful candidate will extend ABM/opinion dynamics models, link them with empirical social network data, and contribute to testing hypotheses with simulations and experiments, under a

Qualifications

• A PhD degree in sociology (or related discipline), preferably with a dissertation topic related to computational sociology.
• A relevant publication record related to the project topic, demonstrating your ability to publish in peer-reviewed international academic journals.
• Demonstrable skills and experience in computational sociology, especially agent-based computational modelling.
• Interest in and knowledge of research addressing social aspects of the energy transition, especially literature on social influence processes in this domain.
• Demonstrable skills in related empirical research, especially social network research and / or behavioral experiments or use of digital trace data.
• A clear interest in collaborative interdisciplinary research.
• Excellent command of the English language; command of German and Dutch is desirable.
• Ability to work independently and manage joint research activities.
• A team player with strong communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop existing opinion dynamics ABM further to make them applicable to empirical settings relevant to societal debates about the energy transition.
• Collaborate with the German partner to align ABM with LLM-based agent models.
• Empirically test hypotheses derived from the computational modelling approaches using social network data or related experiments.
• Contribute to the teaching program of the department (about 10% work time) in line with university requirements.

Skills

PhD in sociology

Publication record

Agent-based modelling

Computational sociology

Social network data

Interdisciplinary collaboration

English proficiency

German/Dutch desirable

Education

PhD in sociology

Tools

NetLogo

Python

Job description

The University of Groningen invites applications for a Postdoctoral researcher to study social dynamics in the energy transition using agent-based modelling. The project is part of ECHO and involves collaboration between the Department of Sociology, RUG, and the Institute of Energy Informatics at Oldenburg.

The successful candidate will extend ABM/opinion dynamics models, link them with empirical social network data, and contribute to testing hypotheses with simulations and experiments, under a