We are looking for one student assistant (10 hours/week) to join the DFG-funded research project B13 "Welfare States and Protest: Understanding the Contentious Outcomes of Social Policy in Africa" of the CRC 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" (Prof. Dr. Sebastian Haunss, Prof. Dr. Sophia Hunger) starting October 1st or first possible date. The position is intended to last for one year. However, due to administrative reasons, the employment contract can initially be drawn up for only three months.
The project B13 aims to systematically analyze for one world region in the Global South (Africa) how the socioeconomic effectiveness and political integration of social policies affect the levels of contention around these policies, and how the inclusiveness and scope of benefits of social policies interact with other factors like perceived grievances, political and discursive opportunity structures, and resources available to protesters and governments. This addresses the absence of the welfare state in protest research and will provide reliable data on protests in Africa by applying state of the art LLMs and integrating multimodal information sources in the analysis.
The following tasks are waiting for you:
- Collaboration in the collection and preparation of datasets (including web scraping and preliminary data cleaning)
- Collaboration in the project „Welfare States and Protest: Understanding the Contentious Outcomes of Social Policy in Africa“ providing support for project-related management and administrative tasks.
- Literature research and assistance in the preparation of data documentation.
You'll be a good fit for us if you have the following profile:
- Studies in social/political sciences or economics or a closely related subject (BA or MA student)
- Experience with programming skills in R and/or Python
- Preliminary knowledge or strong interest of African social policy and protests studies
- Motivation, commitment, ability to work in a team and to work independently
- Willingness to learn advanced data management and NLP
- Very good knowledge of English
- French and/or Arabic is an asset but no exclusion restriction
- Experience with spatial data analysis is a plus
What we offer:
- First-hand experience with the empirical analysis of multimodal data, LLMs and reproducible research best practices
- Support to further develop proficiency in R and/or Python
- Flexible working hours that are compatible with your studies
- A diverse working environment with equal opportunities
The University of Bremen is committed to equal opportunities and diversity. If you are interested, please send your application with a certificate of enrolment, a short letter of motivation, CV, transcript of records and, if applicable, relevant certificates as a single PDF file to the following e-mail address:
We encourage interested candidates to apply as soon as possible, as applications will be considered on a rolling basis and the vacancy will close once filled.
We look forward to receiving your application!
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Sophia Hunger
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58579
E-Mail: sophia.hunger@uni-bremen.de
