Postdoctoral Position Gods, Games, and the Socioecological Landscape

The School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship.

The position is a full time, fixed-term 3-year position and begins on May 15, 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter (please note in your application when you can begin).

The university is keen for its staff to reflect the diversity of society and thus welcomes applications from all qualified applicants regardless of their personal background.

Place of employment

The Department of the Study of Religion, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 3-7, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.

Research context

This position is funded by a Templeton Religion Trust grant awarded to the supervisor, Associate Professor Benjamin Grant Purzycki, at the Department of the Study of Religion. The successful applicant will be collaborating with an international team of researchers engaged in the scientific study of religion and cooperation.

Research and postdoctoral project

In spite of the continued growth in evolutionary and cognitive sciences of religion, little scholarly attention has been directed towards accounting for variation in religious expression using discrete, quantitative methods. The field also lacks the kind of detailed, individual-level data about traditional, small-scale religious beliefs and practices that ground debates. This postdoctoral position will therefore involve contributing to designing a set of empirical projects to be executed cross-culturally, with a particular focus on understanding whether religious beliefs and practices of small-scale traditions revolve around particular social dilemmas. There are two main objectives in the project: 1) an experiment that measures cooperation toward other individuals and 2) locally-catered empirical studies that assess the relationship between beliefs, behaviors, and context. More details can be found here:
https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/projects/gods-games-and-the-socioecological-landscape

Tasks

• Study design and pre-registration of behavioral experiments measuring the relationship between religious beliefs, practices, cooperation, and social ecology (e.g., economic game experiments, between-participant designs, surveys, etc.)
• Data pipeline, management, and analysis of cross-cultural experimental and ethnographic data, including data pooling, version control, and statistical modelling of individual-level quantitative data
• Drafting reports for publication
• Theory development and evidence synthesis in the study of the evolution of religious systems

Qualifications, job requirements and preferences

Applicants must hold a PhD or equivalent qualifications in anthropology, economics, ecology, biology, or any related field that addresses problems in the role religion plays in individual and collective wellbeing.

Applicants must also document:

• Experience and training in quantitative research design and social scientific methods
• Fluency in written and spoken English
• Fluency in a programming language (e.g., R)
• Data analytic skills including multi-level modeling
• The ability to work collaboratively
• Project management experience excellent and effective communication
• A willingness to contribute to a vibrant, enjoyable and friendly work environment

Assets but not requirements

• A research focus on religion with preference for small-scale traditions
• Appreciation for/familiarity with evolutionary game theory, human behavioral ecology, mathematical and agent-based modeling, and cultural evolutionary theory
• Involvement in the cognitive and/or evolutionary sciences of religion
• Diverse expertise in social science research methods
• Bayesian data analytical skills
• Familiarity with methods in causal inference
• Experience with field research (fieldwork support is a possibility)