New Research on Digital Societies

MINDS (Management In Networked and Digital Societies) Department at Kozminski University, a leading research-driven, non-public and non-profit business school in the heart of Europe (EQUIS, AACSB, and AMBA accredited, consistently well recognized in the Financial Times business schools rankings), is seeking to fill one or more open-rank position(s) in computational social sciences.

The candidates should specify if they are applying for a position of:
– research and teaching assistant on a doctoral track(asystent),
– assistant professor (adiunkt).

The research methods of particular interest for the candidates include:
– Using Python/R for online communities studies,
– Large big dataset analyses on primary data (self-collected/scraped), including machine learning,
– Other quantitative studies of digital tribes/communities.

The projects we currently work on include:

• digital propaganda and misinformation/disinformation online (including anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers),
• online gossip, fake news, and tabloid analysis,
• interactions with AI and bots (and bot detection),
• citizen science movements (including anti-fracking, anti-smog, etc.),
• platform capitalism and collaborative society.

About you:

A successful candidate should have a strong academic record matching the position they are applying for. We value journals with impact factor and top-tier academic presses. We are more impressed with the quality than the quantity of research outputs.

Other things we value and may prioritize include:

– extended experience from abroad,
– experience in teaching,
– combined educational background from different fields,
– strong academic orientation,
– good presentation and teaching skills,
– documented academic interests related to computational social sciences,
– fluency in programming languages and/or data scraping and mining tools,
– fluency in data analysis and modeling software.

We do not restrict the background of candidates to a particular field, as we believe that good research can be inspired and developed from different angles. However, we understand that the position may appeal particularly to people doing research in digital sociology, management, management science, data science, econometrics, computer science, information science, or digital humanities. Fluency in Polish is not required, but welcome. Fluency in Python/R is really important.

About the department:

MINDS Department is a highly informal, relatively young team of researchers. We follow participative decision-making principles and, if invited for an interview, you can expect to be interviewed and evaluated by many members of the team, irrespective of the rank you are applying for.

We put great emphasis on internationalization and high academic standards. Over the last five years, MINDS Department faculty have gone on one-year research stays to Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, University of California Berkeley, or New York University, among others. We regularly publish in JCR-listed journals and publish books in the leading academic presses (e.g. Stanford University Press, MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Palgrave, Edward Elgar, Ashgate, Routledge).

Some of us are social movements activists (and e.g. serve on the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation or are engaged in the city movements), some are involved in the start-up culture (mentoring, seed funds, developing own businesses, etc.), and we generally value bringing a diverse experience to the table.

We believe that research should be stellar solid and of high quality, but that it also should be fun. We offer unmatched flexibility and mobility, a lot of independence, and a very friendly working culture.

MINDS Department is closely linked with NeRDS (New Research on Digital Societies) group, which participates in the international Network of Centers.

About the university:

Kozminski University (KU) is a non-public, non-profit business school. Since 1998, KU has consistently been ranked as the best non-public business school in Poland’s annual rankings of private schools of management. KU’s continuous self-improvement and its striving for internationalization have earned the school three accreditations: EQUIS (since 1999), AMBA (since 2008), AASCB (since 2012). On top of that, KU is also accredited by the Central and East European Management Development Association (CEEMAN) since 2001. UN Principles for Responsible Management Education adopted by KU in 2008, as the first university from the region of Central and Eastern Europe, are the guiding rules for the positioning as a regional leader in the field of education. The high quality of education offered by KU is also demonstrated by the position of the university in rankings published by the Financial Times: 42nd place in the Global Masters in Management ranking in 2019 (and a similar position in previous years).

About the next steps:

Questions related to the advertised position can be directed to Dariusz Jemielniak (darekj@kozminski.edu.pl), who will be also more than eager to talk about the potential research collaboration.

The offered position requires the beginning of work in February 2022 or October 2022, and some wiggle room is available. Submit your application by November, 10 2021 to make sure you’re considered.

The prospective candidates are requested to submit their CV, motivation letter (explaining how they fit the call) and a full list of their publications and other academic works, accompanied by a copy of up to 3 most important publications using the form available on the website (switch to English in the top right corner): https://form.jotform.com/212803272989363 until 10/11/2021 

We will only contact selected candidates. Application documents not collected within 3 months after their submission will be disposed of.