PhD Research Fellowship in Political Science

The University of Oslo is Norway’s oldest and highest ranked educational and research institution, with 28,000 students and 7,000 employees in a broad range of academic disciplines. UiO has shaped society for over 200 years. As a leading European university, it promotes independent and innovative research and offers outstanding education.

The Department of Political Science is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences. It is the largest political science department in Norway and covers all subfields of the discipline: international politics, public policy and administration, comparative politics, political theory, and research methods. The department offers a vibrant academic environment with a good mix of permanent staff, postdoctoral and PhD fellows. Around 1,400 students are currently enrolled at BA, MA, and PhD level.

The department runs two large political science programmes at BA and MA level and a specialized programme in Peace and Conflict Studies at MA level. In addition, the department hosts interdisciplinary study programmes at the BA level in International Studies and Public Administration and Leadership. The department has several research groups, including Comparative Institutions and Regimes (CIR), Policy, Bureaucracy and Organisation (PBO), Oslo Political Theory (OPT), Political Data Science (PODS), and CITIZENS.

The Department also hosts the interdisciplinary Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX).

We are offering one PhD position with specialisation in either comparative politics, or political data science. The successful applicant(s) will be part of the research project “Authoritarian Threats to Scientific Knowledge” (Auto Know), which is funded by the European Research Council. The PhD fellowship period is three years and devoted to carrying out research and pursuing a PhD in the context of the Auto Know project.

The position may also include other career-enhancing activities: depending on the candidate’s competence and the teaching needs of the department, the fellowship period can be extended up to four years for qualification work consisting of e.g. teaching duties.

The primary aims of Auto Know are to investigate how the production of scientific knowledge is affected by authoritarian regimes and politics. The project will look at how authoritarian rule affects the contents and research trajectories of scientific fields, and which fields are targeted for repression and co-opation by authoritarian rulers and movements. It will use computational text analysis to measure content-dimensions of published science and collect different data on attacks on academic freedom.

It will study how authoritarian rule affects scientific progress, topic choice, political bias, idea novelty and other dimensions.

• Which academic fields and institutions are repressed and which are supported by authoritarian leaders?
• How does authoritarian rule shape the contents and political profile of academic work in different fields?
• What is the impact of authoritarian rule on scientific progress?

The PhD Fellow is expected to develop a research project within the overarching thematic scope of the larger project, namely authoritarian threats to science. While the PhD project should align with the framework of the main project, the candidate has significant flexibility to pursue their own approach and research agenda. The project proposal should above all include a tentative overall thematic and theoretical framework, along with at least three ideas for academic articles (see below).

The Fellow will be expected to contribute to data collection and measurement, and data analysis.

The successful candidate will be part of the Faculty’s PhD programme. The work is expected to lead to a PhD in political science.

To promote a strategic career path, all PhD fellows are expected to submit a career development plan, specifying career goals and the competencies that the PhD fellow should acquire, no later than one month after commencement of the fellowship period. The department is responsible for ensuring that the plan is followed up and that the PhD fellow has access to…