Postdoctoral researcher “Governing the Digital Society”
Job
Utrecht University offers a full-time position for a postdoctoral researcher for two years (24 months) in the focus area “Governing the Digital Society” (GDS). This interdisciplinary focus area fosters the collaboration between the departments of Media and Culture, Law, Governance, and Information Science. The GDS group promotes research on the socio-technical and political-economic processes of datafication, algorithmisation and platformisation and AI. Your job Our basic research inquiry revolves around the question: How to develop and apply principles of (good) governance in digital societies? Applied research based on this question is also welcomed. The postdoc position will be part of the Spinoza funded project, led by Professor José van Dijck external link and will start no later than 1 October 2024. Postdocs will pursue their own research plan which fits the larger research aims of the GDS group. Projects may differ in scale and scope; we invite you to submit concrete project descriptions that fit our overall goals. Some of the major questions to be addressed in our overall GDS project are: How can we help public institutions to become more transparent, accountable, and responsible by articulating public values and implementing them into (the design of) their online practices? Which roles should governments, legislators, market actors, and citizens play in governing the digital society? How can important normative, ethical, societal principles of algorithmic design be implemented in governance structures? How can data practices and data resources enable citizens and civil society to make public institutions more transparent and to participate meaningfully in democratic and decision-making processes? How can we help (local, national, supranational) governments and independent institutions (e.g. educational, cultural or media organisations) to make sense of novel data resources and develop interpretative practices? How can we develop methodologies to empirically study the governance of and by actors and technologies of the digital society?
Initiator(s):
University of Utrecht
Deadline: 09.06.2024
Start date: 01.10.2024
Location: Utrecht, Netherlands
Post created by: Lymor Wolf Goldstein