Postdoctoral scholarship holder in computational political science

University of Antwerp

The Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Social Sciences is looking for a full-time (100%) postdoctoral scholarship holder in the field of computational political science.

Position

• You will assist in the ongoing research project DEMO-LIES on the link between political representation and political disinformation, funded by the European Research Council.
• You will develop and apply NLP methods (application and development of neural network–based models for tasks such as relation extraction, entity identification, classification, and semantic analysis) to detect and categorise accusations of political disinformation in large corpora of parliamentary debates across 20 democracies.
• You will build a relational dataset that systematically maps accusers, accused, topics, and linguistic forms of disinformation accusations, enabling comparative and longitudinal analysis.
• You will generate novel insights into the prevalence, variation, and strategic use of political disinformation accusations across time and space, and contribute to high-impact publications.
• You will collaborate with other project members (PhDs, postdocs, principal and co-investigators).
• You will participate actively in internal seminars of the Department as well as international conferences and workshops.
• You may be asked to carry out a limited number of teaching and research support tasks for the Department of Political Science.

Project description

The postdoctoral positions are part of the DEMO-LIES project, “Deception in Democracy: Political Lying Accusations and Their Effects on Democratic Citizenship”, led by Prof. Dr. Maurits Meijers. Funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant, this five-year project (2025–2030) investigates how political elites use accusations of lying and disinformation, how citizens perceive such accusations, and what effects these dynamics have on democratic attitudes and behaviours.

DEMO-LIES addresses urgent questions about political communication and democratic integrity. It seeks to understand when and why political actors engage in disinformation accusations, how these accusations influence public perceptions, and what this means for democratic participation and trust. The project aims to generate insights that can strengthen democratic resilience in the face of manipulative political discourse.

The research employs a mixed-method approach. Elite discourse will be studied using advanced quantitative text analysis techniques, particularly natural language processing (NLP) methods, including large language models (LLMs). To examine citizens' responses, the project will combine qualitative focus groups, cross-sectional surveys, and survey experiments. This integrated design allows for a comprehensive analysis of both top-down (elite-driven) and bottom-up (citizen) dynamics of political disinformation.

DEMO-LIES offers an intellectually rich and methodologically diverse environment. The project contributes to current debates on the role of truth in politics and will provide evidence-based insights for academics, policymakers, and civil society actors concerned with safeguarding democratic norms. An outline of the project can be found here.

Profile

• You hold a PhD in political science, computational social science, linguistics, computer science, or a related field (or will have obtained it by the time you start work).
• Your research qualities are in line with the faculty and university research policies.
• Your teaching competences are in line with the University of Antwerp’s educational vision.
• You are motivated to apply computational methods to substantive political science questions.
• You have strong skills in automated text analysis and natural language processing (e.g., machine learning including neural networks, relation and entity extraction, classification, and topic modeling).
• You are comfortable with programming and analysis in R, including tidyverse, reticulate, tidymodels, etc.
• You are comfortable programming in Python and working with relevant NLP/ML libraries (e.g., spaCy, scikit-learn, Transformers, TensorFlow, or PyTorch).
• You have experience with collecting, cleaning, and annotating large text corpora.
• You have excellent command of English in both speaking and writing.
• It is an advantage if you have experience with parliamentary debate data or other political text corpora.
• It is an advantage if you are familiar with comparative politics, political communication, or democratic theory.
• It is an advantage if you have knowledge of multilingual NLP approaches.
• It is an advantage if you have experience in publishing in leading scientific journals.
• It is an advantage if you bring strong collaborative skills for team-based research.
• It is an advantage if you have experience with Linux systems.

What we offer

• We offer a full-time appointment as a postdoctoral scholarship holder for a period of one year. Following a positive evaluation, the scholarship can be renewed for another two years.
• You will have access to a dedicated high-performance workstation (Dell Precision 7960 Tower with NVIDIA RTX 6000 GPU, 128GB RAM, 32-core CPU) for large-scale NLP and machine learning experiments.
• The planned start date is 15 November 2025 or as soon as possible after that date.
• Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for postdoctoral scholarship holders on the pay scales for Contract Research Staff.
• You will receive ecocheques, Internet-connectivity allowance and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
• You will do most of your work at the Stadscampus in Antwerp in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.

Want to apply?

• You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including Thursday, October 16, 2025 (by midnight Brussels time). Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments: a motivation letter, your academic CV, and two samples of academic or scientific work (e.g., published peer-reviewed articles, reports, Master’s thesis, or relevant computational outputs such as code repositories or software tools).
• The selection committee reviews all applications as soon as possible after the application deadline. As soon as a decision is made, we will notify you. If you are still eligible after the pre-selection, you will be informed about the possible next step(s) in the selection procedure. Candidates in subsequent selection rounds can be asked to perform a task in preparation of the personal interviews.
• If you have any questions about the online application form, please check the frequently asked questions or send an email to jobs@uantwerpen.be. If you have any questions about the job itself, please contact maurits.meijers@uantwerpen.be.