[Commlist] Vacancy: Research Associate for the Project “Which Public Sphere System for Democracy? –PSS4DEMOCRACY”

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Research Associate for the Project “Which Public Sphere System for 
Democracy? – PSS4DEMOCRACY” § 28 Subsection 3 HmbHG

https://www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenangebote/ausschreibung.html?jobID=39d9c56f5fbbf91ea35aa10838e5592b65c4310a

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Institution: Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, 
Department of Social Sciences, Journalism and Communication Studies, 
Digital Journalism

Salary level: EGR. 13 TV-L

Start date: 01.05.2026 pending approval of external funding, fixed until 
30.04.2030 (This is a fixed-term contract in accordance with Section 2 
of the academic fixed-term labor contract act 
[Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, WissZeitVG]).

Application deadline: 05.02.2026

Scope of work: part-time

Weekly hours: 80 % of standard work hours per week

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YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research 
associates may also pursue independent research and further academic 
qualifications. They may also pursue doctoral studies outside of working 
duties.

This project introduces a fundamentally new way of studying the public 
sphere by designing and testing models of algorithmic news supply that 
translate normative democratic ideals into experimentally observable 
news environments. More information on the project is available at:

Public Spheres for Democracy: Journalism and Communication Studies, esp. 
Digital Journalism 
<https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/en/fachbereich-sowi/professuren/lischka/forschung/projekte/pss4democracy.html>

As PhD Student, you will contribute to this approach by developing 
conceptual and empirical measures of public sphere principles and 
applying them to the systematic analysis of political news content.

Research:

* conduct a systematic literature review on political public sphere 
models and news recommender systems (NRS)

* operationalize public sphere principles into measurable metrics for 
algorithmic news supply using computational methods

* analyze large-scale multilingual news corpora to assess political news 
performance, including party visibility, viewpoint diversity, 
emotionalization, and other indicators

* co-develop NLP-based metrics with manual validation

* present results at international workshops, conferences, and lead as 
well as contribute to publications in academic journals

Collaboration & Project Coordination:

* work closely with an interdisciplinary team

* support and take over responsibility in project coordination

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YOUR PROFILE

A university degree in a relevant field.

You are an excellent early-career researcher with a strong interest in 
the intersection of journalism studies, political communication, and 
computational methods.

Required Qualifications:

* a completed (or near completion) Master’s degree in Communication 
Science, Journalism Studies, Political Science, Computational Social 
Science, or a related field

* strong knowledge of public sphere theories, democratic models, and/or 
political communication

* experience with empirical research, especially content analysis or 
computational text analysis

* familiarity with Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods or 
willingness to develop these skills (e.g., entity linking, stance 
detection, multilingual models)

* strong analytical, conceptual, and academic writing skills

Desirable Qualifications:

* ability to work with large datasets, scrape or handle news corpora, 
and perform reproducible data analysis

* background in journalism research, news diversity, or media performance

* experience with Python, machine learning libraries, or multilingual NLP

* interest in algorithmic curation, recommender systems, or democratic 
theory

* ability to work independently, proactively, and collaboratively in an 
interdisciplinary, international team

* excellent command of English (written and spoken)

* command of German (written and spoken)

* Polish or Norwegian language skills are a plus

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WE OFFER

* Reliable remuneration based on wage agreements

* Continuing education opportunities

* University pensions

* Attractive location

* Flexible working hours

* Work-life balance opportunities

* Health management, EGYM Wellpass

* Educational leave

* 30 days of vacation per annum

Additional benefits:

* integration into a cutting-edge ERC project bridging communication 
studies, political theory, and computer science

* collaboration with internationally recognized researchers and access 
to state-of-the-art computational infrastructure

* support for conference participation, publications, and academic 
career development

* a dynamic, interdisciplinary, and supportive research Environment

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Universität Hamburg—University of Excellence is one of the strongest 
research educational institutions in Germany. Our work in research, 
teaching, educational and knowledge exchange activities is fostering the 
next generation of responsible global citizens ready to tackle the 
global challenges facing us. Our guiding principle “Innovating and 
Cooperating for a Sustainable Future in a digital age” drives 
collaboration with academic and nonacademic partner institutions in the 
Hamburg Metropolitan Region and around the world. We would like to 
invite you to be part of our community to work with us in creating 
sustainable and digital change for a dynamic and pluralist society.

The University of Hamburg is committed to equity. Diversity enriches our 
university life, whether in our studies, research, teaching, education, 
or workplace. We therefore welcome all applications, regardless of 
gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnic or social 
background, age, religion or belief, disability, or chronic illness.

The University of Hamburg strives to increase the number of women in 
academia, and encourages qualified female academics to apply.

Severely disabled and disabled applicants with the same status will 
receive preference over equally qualified non-disabled applicants.

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HOW TO APPLY

Application is only accepted via the online application form. You can 
access the form via the vacancy posting on University Hamburg's Homepage:

https://www.uni-hamburg.de/stellenangebote/ausschreibung.html?jobID=39d9c56f5fbbf91ea35aa10838e5592b65c4310a

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Juliane Lischka

(juliane.lischka /at/ uni-hamburg.de)

+49 40 2395-24703

Reference number: 9

Location:

Von-Melle-Park 5

20146 Hamburg

Zu Google Maps

Application deadline: February 5, 2026

Application is only accepted via the online application form. You can 
access the form via the vacancy posting on University Hamburg's Homepage:

https://www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenangebote/ausschreibung.html?jobID=39d9c56f5fbbf91ea35aa10838e5592b65c4310a

Submit your application with the following documents:

* cover letter

* CV

* copies of degree certificate(s)

If you experience technical problems, send an email to 
(bewerbungen /at/ uni-hamburg.de).

More information on data protection in selection procedures.

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