Postdoctoral position in Credibility and Asylum Law, University of Copenhagen

The Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, is seeking applications for a Postdoc position in credibility and Nordic asylum law. The position is part of the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab and the Postdoc will form part of an interdisciplinary team composed of sociolegal scholars and computer scientists working on the Explainable Artificial Intelligence and Credibility in Asylum Decision-making (XAI-CRED) project.

The position is available from September 1, 2025 for a duration of 30 months.

Introduction
Despite decades of EU harmonisation and growing international jurisprudence, the chance of receiving asylum for people from the same country or groups still varies significantly across Nordic and European countries. These variations have led to repeated accusations describing legal decision-making as “refugee roulette,” and the EU Dublin system establishing where asylum applications should be processed as an “asylum lottery.”

The Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab draws on unique access to large datasets of Nordic asylum case law from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and an interdisciplinary team spanning law, computer science and medicine. We aim to produce novel approaches to answering two fundamental questions in refugee research: What factors shape the production of national asylum decisions? and, Why do asylum outcomes across similar cases differ so much from one another? Asylum decision-making (also called refugee status determination) is a complex process revolving around not only law, but also inter-subjective assessments of applicants’ credibility and the import of medical and other forms of evidence. Consequently, the asylum process often appears as “black boxed” to both applicants and scholars and little is known about how different aspects interact and shape outcomes. By creating a better understanding of the factors shaping asylum outcomes the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab aims to contribute to basic science as well as to inform ongoing policy processes and public discourse. Migration law is moreover a field set to be fundamentally reshaped by computational technologies. We aim to ensure that research informs these ongoing processes while simultaneously raising important critical questions about how new technologies are implemented and the inherent risks of (re-)producing bias or discrimination.

The advertised Postdoc position will form part of a new 5-year project funded by the Villum Foundation. The XAI-CRED project is led by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (University of Copenhagen) and Thomas B. Moeslund (Aalborg University) and aims to develop an explainable AI (XAI) model to better understand what role credibility assessment plays in asylum decision-making. Doing so, the project aims to contribute to a) international refugee law and evidence theory; b) (X)AI and law; and c) concrete policy development in the Nordics and internationally.

About the position
The Postdoc will form a part of the XAI-CRED project team composed of both (socio-)legal scholars and computer scientists both the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and the AI for the People Center at Aalborg University. The Postdoc will be responsible for securing a strong link to international refugee law, Nordic asylum law and evidence law within the project. Working together with data scientists, the Postdoc will be able to critically test different assumptions and explanatory factors and promote novel approaches to researching these areas of law more broadly. Methodologically, the Postdoc may engage with both formal-legal and socio-legal approaches to credibility in asylum decision-making. Empirically, the main part of the project will focus on a large dataset of Danish asylum case law; and the ability to read Danish and contextualise case law in relation to Danish law and international refugee law is thus important. The Postdoc will be able to help shape the research agenda within the project and also pursue own research ideas within the overarching scope of the project. The XAI-CRED project is further committed to ensuring onward career possibilities for early career scholars. After completion of the initial project period, the Postdoc will thus be enabled to apply for an extension of their employment as either Postdoc or Assistant Professor.

Beyond the project team, the Postdoc will form part of the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab, an interdisciplinary group comprised of 20+ researchers from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The Lab forms part of the Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law (MOBILE), where the Postdoc will be physically based. The center was established in 2023 based on a grant from the Danish National Research Foundation and its mission is to systematically study the legal infrastructures of human mobility across geographies, social divides, travel patterns and time.

For information about the Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab see: https://asylumdata.ku.dk.

For information about the MOBILE Center see: https://mobilitylaw.ku.dk.

It is a part of employment to contribute to teaching. Applicants are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the faculty's research areas and education programmes by visiting the faculty’s website: www.jura.ku.dk.

The faculty actively supports efforts to learn Danish.

Required qualifications
The position requires academic qualifications PhD, JSD or equivalent degree in law, social science or a related discipline. All applicants are expected to be able to use English as the working language (written and spoken). Successful candidates will demonstrate a clear potential to deliver high quality peer-reviewed research publications.

Specific qualifications in relation to the XAI-CRED project include:

• a proven track record in international refugee law, Nordic asylum law and/or related areas of administrative and evidence law;
• the ability to read Danish case law and contextualise case law in relation to Danish law, international refugee law, and human rights law;
• willingness, and preferably prior experience, working with other researchers to conduct collective and interdisciplinary research.

In the overall assessment, emphasis will be placed both on the applicant’s research and teaching potential. Special emphasis will be placed on the applicant’s ambition to develop and implement new research ideas, which have the potential for international impact. The position also involves teaching duties at the Faculty of Law. The applicant is thus encouraged to reflect on how and in relation to what courses offered by the Faculty this commitment is best fulfilled in the teaching portfolio and/or letter of motivation.

Salary and terms of employment
The appointment is temporary and will be made in accordance with the agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (Akademikernes Centralorganisation, AC). In addition to the basic salary, you will receive an annual supplement per month and a total contribution to your pension fund equal to 17.1 % of your salary and annual supplement is paid. It is possible to negotiate further salary supplements. 

Application
Letter of motivation, appendices and the submitted research publications (including papers, articles and books), must be written in English. The application will be rejected if not all the required documents are submitted.

It is essential that you fill out all the mandatory fields in the electronic application even though the info is already stated in your CV, application, publication or other material you may find relevant to upload. The completed fields will be screened during the shortlisting and assessment process and in order to generate your final assessment, which we will send to you after the assessment work is finalized.

The application MUST include the following nine (9) elements:

1. Letter of motivation (a one-page document explaining the reasons for applying).
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Research project (applications should include a proposal for a research project to be completed during the post-doctoral period. The proposal should be no more than four pages long. The proposal should demonstrate the capacity to develop a Postdoctoral project, identifying the relevant methodological tools to achieve the outlined project). 
4. Diplomas, PhD or JSD diploma or alternatively a document showing that the applicant submitted or will submit a dissertation.  
5. Publication list (complete, numbered list of publications)
6. Teaching portfolio, including documentation for teaching qualifications as well as a brief statement of the applicant's teaching visions within the research area. For more information regarding the teaching portfolio, please see the related guidelines.
7. Academic references, if available (please upload under “other relevant material”)
8. A maximum of five (5) scientific publications that the applicant wishes to have included in the assessment, of which no more than one (1) may be a monograph. Applicants, who have written a PhD or JSD thesis or equivalent, must always submit the complete thesis (if the thesis is written in Danish, English, Swedish or Norwegian) and the written assessment of the thesis as a part of submitted publications.
9. If citing work where the applicant has been a co-author, a co-author declaration, which addresses the applicant's share of these works, must be submitted. Material that has not yet been published can be submitted. However, please indicate if this is the case.

In addition to the material which the applicant wishes to be included in the assessment, the assessment committee may require further material to assess the applicant. It is the applicant’s responsibility to provide such supplementary material, should this be requested.

Application procedure
Upload letter of motivation, appendices and the research publications electronically using the link below. We advise you to have the above mentioned documents ready before you begin to fill out your online application, and it is essential that all required documents are enclosed.

An automatically generated message is sent out acknowledging receipt of the uploaded application.

Applicants will be kept informed about the process of the application procedure on a regular basis via email.

Following the application deadline, the Associate Dean of Research selects applicants for assessment on the advice of the appointments committee. Applicants are selected on the basis of an overall assessment of the applicants that best match the recruitment needs of the faculty as described in this advertisement for the post. This is compared with the applicant's research and teaching profile as set out in the application, CV incl. list of publication, teaching portfolio and any research/development plan. All applicants are then immediately notified whether their application has been passed for assessment by an expert assessment committee. Selected applicants are notified of the composition of the committee and when the committee has completed its assessment, each applicant has the opportunity to comment on the part of the assessment that relates to the applicants themselves.

University of Copenhagen wishes to reflect the surrounding society and therefore encourages all interested parties regardless of personal background to apply for the position.

Questions about project is available from Professor Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, [email protected].

Further information about the recruitment process is available from HR, e-mail: [email protected]. Please refer to ID number 211-2139/25-2I #2.

The application deadline is 23 April, 2025, 23:59 GMT+1.

Applications received after the deadline has expired will not be accepted.


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The Faculty of Law is one of six faculties at the University of Copenhagen. The Faculty carries out research, education and knowledge dissemination within the area of law. Research is partly organized in research centres and groups with focus on thematic areas of interest. The Faculty employs about 135 researchers and approx. 50 PhD students as well as approx. 15 administrative staff members. In addition, approx. 450 part-time lecturers teach on the legal programmes on which approx. 4,500 students are enrolled. See the Faculty website: http://jura.ku.dk/english for more information.