Irish Research Council (IRC) Doctoral Researcher

Fixed Term: 4 years (48 months)

Application deadline: 8th  April, 5pm at [email protected]

Proposed Start Date: 2nd May 2024

Applications are invited for a PhD doctoral researcher within the UCD School of Politics and International Relations to deliver the research objectives of a project funded by the Irish Research Council. The project applies methods from quantitative text analysis/NLP in Arabic and cognitive mapping (Axelrod 1976) to examine interviews with participants in Muslim resistance movements.

You will conduct a specified programme of doctoral research to contribute to specific work packages of the project, under the supervision and direction of the Principal Investigator - Dr. Stephanie Dornschneider-Elkink.

You will be given the autonomy to design your own research questions within the scope of the project. But as part of this, you will be tasked with text analysis in Arabic and support the development of new tools to convert Arabic text into cognitive maps. Tasks will include POS tagging, sequence analysis, visualization, and web-scraping.

Knowledge of Arabic is a plus but not a requirement.

The benefits include:

• €25,000 tax-free stipend per year for 4 years.
• Full fees paid every year.
• Dedicated office space.
• Access to university resources, such as library and campus facility.
• A multidisciplinary doctoral studies research panel
• PhD in Politics and International Relations or Quantitative and Computational Social Sciences

Application materials:

• Cover letter outlining your motivation for the PhD position (max 2 pages).
• Curriculum Vitae (max 2 pages – focused on your educational/research credentials).
• Thesis proposal addressing the IRC project (max 2 pages).
• Names and contact details of 2 referees.

Applications should be emailed to [email protected] by 5pm on April 8th .