Civic Science Fellow, Center for Health Communication

Civic Science Fellow, Center for Health Communication

Company: Harvard University

Job Location: Cambridge, 02138

Category: Media and Communication Studies

Type: Full-Time

School: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Department/Area: The Center for Health Communication, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Position Description

The Center for Health Communication at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health invites applications for a Civic Science Fellow embedded in the Center's groundbreaking Creator Program. Applications are welcome from recent Ph.D.s and Ph.D. students who expect to earn their Ph.D. by the start date. The position will start on or about September 1, 2026.

Position summary

The Civic Science Fellow will embed in the Center's Creator Program, using it as a living laboratory and answer pressing questions facing civic science in a social-media-dominated world. Working closely with creators in our program as research collaborators ("creator engaged research"), the Fellow will use computational and quantitative methods to study creator-mediated health communication in online environments, using large-scale, multisource, multimodal data. In doing so they will answer questions like: How are creators shifting audiences' health beliefs and behaviors? What drives trust between creators and their audiences? And can creators working with health and science organizations inspire public demands for health policy reform?

The Fellow would work with the Center's research team to turn their findings into manuscripts submitted to peer-reviewed scholarly journals and an evidence-driven playbook for civic science institutions hoping to invest in creator partnerships.

The Fellow should be motivated to contribute to creator-engaged research, committed to advancing public health and well-being, and dedicated to conducting rigorous research. This role offers the opportunity to independently learn and operate in a multidisciplinary environment, bring creativity to advancing the field of creator-engaged research, and work in a fast-paced, proactive setting. In this work the Fellow will engage with diverse stakeholders, including academics, creators, those working at platforms and in the creator economy, and policymakers.

Responsibilities:

• Provide data collection, management, analysis, and visualization assistance for the Center's ongoing creator-engaged research projects related to trust in social media content about health-related topics and creator-driven public demands for health policy reform.
• Develop and pursue independent research agendas aligned with the Center's creator-engaged research focus
• Participate fully in the intellectual life of the Center, including in seminars, workshops, and interdisciplinary research discussions that deepen expertise in public health

Location

This position is based in Boston, MA.

Application deadline

5/15/2026. Applications will be reviewed by 6/12/2026.

Term:

This is an 18-month term position from the date of hire.

Schedule:Full-time, hybrid with a minimum of three on-campus days per week, remote work not permitted.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD in computer science, social science (including, but not limited to: public health, communication, sociology, public policy, psychology, etc.), or any other field that uses advanced computational and statistical methods.
• Experience developing and applying statistical and computational models (e.g., hypothesis testing, regression, machine learning]
• Ability to analyze unstructured and multimodal data from social media and other digital platforms (primarily text, but also including images, video, and metadata).
• Statistical processing experience (R, Python, or equivalent) is strongly preferred but not

Additional Qualifications

Preferred experience:

• Demonstrated experience and/or capabilities to query, pull, parse, and clean data from social media company APIs and publicly available web sources
• Ability to analyze social media videos and/or images as data
• Ability to integrate large language models and AI tools into new and existing data collection, analysis, and/or visualization.
• Familiarity with theoretical models widely used in the study of public health and/or mass communication
• Familiarity with field, survey, and/or quasi-experimental methods, event history modeling, multilevel modeling, and/or advanced econometrics.

Special Instructions

A complete application includes a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and two research paper writing samples. In the cover letter, applicants should outline their computational skills and experience, their interest in the position, and their commitment to civic science. You will also be asked to provide the email addresses of three references from whom we will obtain confidential letters of recommendation.

Contact Information

Maria LoSurdo
Director Administration
Social and Behavioral Sciences

Contact Email: mlosurdo@hsph.harvard.edu

Salary Range

$65,000-75,000

Minimum Number of References Required: 3

Maximum Number of References Allowed: 3