Postdoctoral Researcher in Mathematical Modelling in Economics

Could a lack of a sense of belonging cause a decline of democracy? As a postdoc, you will for instance aim to answer this question by modeling the decline of democracy in a setting with right- and left-wing radicals who amplify a lacking sense of belonging. This will help deepen our understanding of protectionism, populism or political polarisation, or suggest policies to prevent the decline of democracy.

We are looking for an academic who is willing to engage with the work of the Radboud University Centre for Analytical Modelling (2/3 of your duties) and teach mathematics-oriented courses at the Economics Department (1/3 of your duties).

RUCAM started out with two initial projects. One project is based on Benedict Anderson's (1983) idea of imagined communities, i.e. the human desire to find a sense of belonging. Wintrobe (2019) argues that essentially 'all' causes for the decline of democracy can be traced back to a lack of such a sense of belonging. The idea is to model the decline of democracy, possibly by extending an already sophisticated model by Svolik (2018), in a setting with right and left wing radicals who amplify a lacking sense of belonging (stemming from, for instance, globalisation or migration shock). The analysis may, on the one hand, help deepen our understanding of current political phenomena such as protectionism, populism or political polarisation in connection with, for instance, Brexit or Donald Trump; and, on the other hand, it may suggest appropriate policies to prevent the decline of democracy.

Part of your task will be to help characterise appropriate model assumptions, levels of abstraction and techniques. This is important because approaches, techniques and results of the aforementioned projects will then be showcased at seminars, with the idea of attracting researchers from other disciplines such as healthcare, cognitive neuroscience, sensorimotor control research, linguistics or (neuro)psychology, where similar or different modelling techniques are applied. You should also expect to participate in the preparation of international conferences aimed at bringing together scientists who use analytical modelling techniques. You will also have teaching duties and may have to participate in developing analytical modelling modules.

For a list of current projects, please consult our website: www.rucam.nl .