Part-time Research Assistant (60%) - Letterkunde (30097

Organisation/Company Ghent University Research Field Communication sciences » Media studies Educational sciences » Other Language sciences » Other Literature » Other Political sciences » Other Sociology » Other Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 14 Aug 2026 - 21:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Part-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Horizon Europe Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15,000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities. With its 11 faculties and more than 80 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.

DELIAH:
Democratic Literacy and Humour (UGent) seeks a highly motivated and independent Research Assistant (part-time [60%]; fixed-term [1 October 2026 – 30 June 2027]) to lead the design, production, testing, and finalisation of a media-literacy toolkit focusing on anti-democratic humour online, including far-right, extremist, conspiratorial, and broadly harmful political humour.

DELIAH:
Democratic Literacy and Humour (  ) is a Horizon Europe research project (2025–2029) involving more than twenty researchers and practitioners from universities across Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Slovakia, and Estonia and an NGO in the Netherlands. Led by Ghent University, DELIAH investigates how humour shapes democratic participation in artistic and cultural spaces, both online and offline.

The Research Assistant will lead the development, testing, and refinement of one of DELIAH’s principal deliverables for Work Package 4 : “D4.2:
Toolkit for Promoting Democratic Literacy.”The toolkit will help educators, students, civil society organisations, journalists, and members of the public to recognise, interpret, and respond critically to anti-democratic humour by understanding how humour functions rhetorically in digital environments, how it can normalise anti-democratic ideas, and how democratic resilience can be strengthened through critical media literacy. Following development, the toolkit will undergo testing with stakeholders and end-users before final revision and public dissemination across Europe.

The Research Assistant will work closely with Prof. Andrew Bricker (Academic Coordinator of DELIAH and Associate Prof. of English Literature, UGent:  ) and alongside (potentially) an MA student intern from the MA Programme in Gender & Diversity in the English Section of UGent’s Department of Literary Studies (Blandijnberg
2). The Research Assistant will be assigned a desk in a shared office space with the possibility of hybrid work.

Tasks of the successful applicant will include:

• reviewing existing educational toolkits from Europe and elsewhere and transforming academic research into accessible educational resources;
• leading development of the toolkit, including developing educational modules on anti-democratic humour and democratic literacy; designing classroom activities, discussion exercises, worksheets, case studies, and explanatory materials; creating media-literacy resources addressing memes, irony, satire, visual culture, social media, and online extremist communication; identifying examples and case studies suitable for educational contexts; and user testing, evaluation, and revision of the toolkit in consultation with educational stakeholders across both Belgium and Europe more generally;
  
  and
• collaborating with researchers from DELIAH partner institutions in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Estonia, and Slovakia; contributing to accompanying documentation and dissemination materials; participating in and taking minutes during project meetings; and helping with the organisation and…