Post-doctoral Fellow Position in Computational Social Science

The Tracking Horizontal Inequalities Across Dimensions (TrIAD) Project and the Pitt Disinformation Lab (PDL) are searching for one post-doctoral fellow to help lead a series of research initiatives that model inequalities and injustices from textual documents and the social impacts of mis/dis/mal-information both online and in person.

The TrIAD project is an NSF-funded exploration of how high-resolution information on horizontal inequalities can improve our predictions and understanding of intrastate competition and violence. The project leverages the Parsing Unstructured Language into Sentiment-Aspect Representations (PULSAR) toolset, which is a Python-based parser for human rights-related documents.

PDL is the center of the University of Pittsburgh’s attempts to understand and work with communities to build resilience to systems of dis/mis/mal-information. The lab fuses computational tools with community engagement to focus attention on the real-world harms exacerbated by the illusion of unbiased digital communications and how a recognition of the person-to-person and material reality of social media ecosystems can improve decision-making and democracy.  

The successful applicant will serve 1) 50 percent as the TrIAD project programming lead overseeing a small team of coders working on understanding human rights, horizontal inequalities, and intrastate conflict;  and 2) 50 percent as the PDL computational coordinator building tools that measure, analyze, predict, and explain the role that mis/mis/mal-information plays across Western PA. The position reports to Michael Colaresi who is the PI for the TrIAD project and the director of PDL. Candidates will need to have a Ph.D. before August 1, 2022.  Work arrangements, including expected time in the office, will be flexible regarding the ongoing pandemic. The position is renewable conditional on the availability of funds and performance. 

Experience working with text and social media data is required. Advanced knowledge of using Python or Julia, along with bash/zsh, make, and git together for replicable research practices is also necessary. Experience with building documentation, continuous integration tools, and GPU programming is a plus. Applicants that have experience working on computational social science projects are preferred but all applicants will be considered.  

Application review will begin on February 14, 2022. Further details and application can be found here:

https://cfopitt.taleo.net/careersection/pitt_faculty_external_pd/jobdetail.ftl?job=22000576&tz=GMT-05%3A00&tzname=America%2FNew_York 

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