Postdoctoral position in climate change communication and machine learning

Postdoctoral position in climate change communication and machine learning

The Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invites candidates for a postdoctoral position in climate change communication and machine learning from 1 September 2025 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The position is for three years and full-time.

Introduction
The Postdoc will work on a research project about media portrayals of climate change advocates, supervised by PI Clara Vandeweerdt. The position also involves the equivalent of 9 months of teaching (and some administrative) work, spread out over three years.

SODAS is an interdisciplinary research, teaching, and impact center situated at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen, combining traditional social science theories and methods with novel data science methods and paradigms. The center includes about 40 researchers across different levels and with different scientific backgrounds and offers a supportive and international research environment. The SODAS community has strong collaborative relationships with all departments at the Faculty of Social Sciences, as well as internationally renowned research groups and centers at other institutions in the Copenhagen area and beyond.

Duties and Responsibilities
Together with the PI, the Postdoc will work on two major studies in the project. The first study involves analyzing the content of online news media in the US, UK, and Germany. The goal of this study is to find out who is advocating for climate action. Is it a demographically narrow group consisting of, say, mostly white, urban, highly educated women? Or is there more diversity? This study involves data scraping, natural language processing, and computer vision tasks. The second study involves experimentally testing the importance of climate advocates’ backgrounds. If news consumers hear climate advocacy from people who are like, or very different from, them, does that make a difference for the effectiveness of the message?

In addition, the Postdoc will teach in the Master’s degree program in Social Data Science (SDS). The program combines state-of-the-art data science techniques, including machine learning, predictive analytics, and natural language processing with core anthropological, economic, political science, psychological, and sociological theories and methods to equip students with the competences to identify, assess, and solve societal and business problems in the digital age. 

The successful DFF Inge Lehmann grant application leading to this post-doc call can be found here: http://www.claravdw.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/DFF-Inge-Lehmann-2024.pdf

Your Competencies and Opportunities
The candidate must have obtained a PhD degree in either data science, computer science, or social (data) science before starting the position. Candidates should have strong quantitative skills. The ideal candidate combines social science knowledge with skills in natural language processing.

The position offers the opportunity to work on climate communication research with clear real-world relevance, aimed at top social or data science journals. The Post-doc will apply and build skills in state-of-the-art data science methods and be part of an interdisciplinary and welcoming work environment centered around social data science. It also involves the possibility of traveling to conferences.

Candidates should be willing to be a part of implementing this project in alignment with the values behind it, in particular the intention to have a positive (or at least neutral) impact on the climate and on ecosystems. This means that project researchers will be, e.g., traveling by train for project-related activities as much as possible, and choosing smaller language and image processing models run on servers in markets with a green electricity mix whenever possible.

Strategy of the Faculty of the Social Sciences
SODAS is part of the Faculty of the Social Sciences. The Faculty is a successful academic community that strives to put knowledge into action by:

• Engaging partners in the co-creation of knowledge, learning and social change.
• Empowering our students to become reflective and responsible citizens who have the vision, the knowledge and the competences to change society for the better.
• Energising global, European and Danish communities of knowledge by innovating research methodologies and by research findings with impact

For more on the Faculty strategy, see http://samf.ku.dk/fakultetet/strategi/ You can read more about SODAS here: https://sodas.ku.dk/about/.

Terms of Employment

• Further information on qualification requirements as postdoc can be found in the Memorandum on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Danish Universities 2019 here: https://employment.ku.dk/faculty/criteria-for-recognising-merit/dokumenter/Ministerial_Order_no._1443_of_11_December_2019_on_Job_Structure_for_Academic_Staff_at_Universities.pdf
• Terms of appointment and salary is in accordance with the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (Akademikerne).
• The salary range starts at DKK 38,700 per month + a 17.1 % contribution to the pension scheme. It is possible to negotiate salary supplements on an annual basis.

The recruitment process
Further information on the recruitment process at University of Copenhagen can be found here:  https://employment.ku.dk/faculty/recruitment-process/

An Equal Opportunity Workplace
The University of Copenhagen is committed in its pursuit of academic excellence to equality of opportunity and to creating an inclusive working environment and therefore encourages all qualified candidates to apply, regardless of personal background, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, ethnicity etc. For more on the diverse working place environment at the University and the University’s participation in the HRS4R HR Excellence in Research, see https://employment.ku.dk/working-at-ucph/eu-charter-for-researchers/

International applicant?
The University of Copenhagen offers a broad variety of services for international researchers and accompanying families, including support before and during your relocation and career counselling to expat partners. Please find more information about these services as well as information on entering and working in Denmark here: https://ism.ku.dk/

Contact information
Information about the recruitment process is available from HR, e-mail: [email protected], please refer to ID number: 211-2122/25-2I #2

Additional information about the position can be obtained from Clara Vandeweerdt, e-mail: [email protected].

How to apply
Submit a complete application at our online portal. Click on the “Apply now” icon at the bottom of the page to apply. The documents must be in Adobe PDF or Word. 

Your application must be written in English and include the following documents:

• Motivated application
• Curriculum vitae
• Diploma (master and bachelor)
• An academic writing sample, e.g. a recent published or working paper of which you are first author

The closing date for applications is 23:59 CEST 4 April 2025.

Applications or enclosures received thereafter will not be considered.