Postdoc Research Position in Political Science/Computational Social Science

### (full-time, E 13 TV-L)

## Reference no.: 2026/096. Applications are invited for a 3-year postdoctoral research position as part of the project “INEQUALITY AND SUPPORT FOR LONG-TERM INVESTMENT POLICIES (IneqInvest)” led by Marius Busemeyer, Sebastian Koos, and Alexander Horn, and part of the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” (). The position is available as of October 1st, 2026.

The University of Konstanz is a dynamic and internationally successful research university with approximately 10,000 students. The campus university’s architecture promotes interdisciplinary cooperation and a sense of community among researchers, lecturers and students. The University of Konstanz has been continuously funded by the German Excellence Strategy since 2006.

Addressing societal challenges such as technological change, population ageing, and climate change requires long-term investment policies (LTIPs) whose benefits emerge over time. These include investments in education, infrastructure, and climate mitigation. Because LTIPs entail short-term financial and political costs, they are contested. IneqInvest examines how inequalities shape support for such policies and whether and why voters and collective actors differ in their support.

Against this backdrop, the project addresses the following key questions (see for details):

How do socio-economic and ideological factors shape support for long-term investment policies? Do political parties amplify or moderate short-term demands from their voters? How do interest groups and social movements influence LTIP political debates and outcomes? Which actors and conditions facilitate or hinder the adoption of future-oriented policies?

The postdoc will work on mapping collective actors’ long-term investment policy positions; building on existing, extending, and analyzing corpus data. More specifically, our aim is to find out how parties, interest groups, and social movements position themselves on LTIPs, how the positions align with public attitudes, and affect policies. The position requires expertise in computational social science and/or text-as-data methods, excellent written and oral communication skills in English, and the ability to work independently and contribute proactively and effectively to team-based research.

Your Responsibilities

• Process and analyze political text
• Contribute to research on future-oriented policy, broadly defined, through a focus on specific policy issues and fields (social investment, climate policy) as well as the future-orientation of language
• Joint publication of project results
• Be active in the project and the broader Cluster of Excellence

Your Competencies

• PhD in political science or related field (e.g., CSS), quantitative focus
• Excellent skills in quantitative empirical methods, especially in automated text analysis and on LLMs
• Worked on positions or salience
• Ideally: worked with SQL/SQLite
• Ideally: publication experience

We Offer

• An international and interdisciplinary research community, incl. the
• A family-friendly and diversity-conscious university and workplace
• A wide network of partners and funds for conference participation
• A beautiful setting on the shores of Lake Constance and River Rhine, close to the Alps and Switzerland

Contacts for questions about this position are and .

We look forward to receiving your application (CV with names and contact details of two potential referees who may be contacted upon request, cover letter, writing sample (journal article or dissertation chapter) via our by June 5th 2026.

The University of Konstanz is committed to ensuring an environment that provides equal opportunities and promotes diversity, as well as a good balance between university and family life. As an equal opportunity employer, we strive to increase the number of women working in research and teaching. We also support working couples through our . Persons with disabilities are explicitly encouraged to apply. They will be given preference if appropriately qualified (contact , + 49 7531 88-4016).