Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science

Reference number PAR 2026/744 The University of Gothenburg tackles society’s challenges with diverse knowledge. 58 000 students and 6800 employees make the university a large and inspiring place to work and study. Strong research and attractive study programmes attract researchers and students from around the world. With new knowledge and new perspectives, the University contributes to a better future. The Department of Political Science is an international academic environment that welcomes students, researchers and staff from all over the world. Our research covers topics such as political institutions, elections, public opinion and democracy, international and European politics, environmental politics, corruption and political ideas. The Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg is ranked as the best in Sweden and one of the top departments in Europe. We organize many seminars and workshops each year in the various research areas of the department. We offer education at all levels in both Swedish and English. In total, around 1,400 people study with us, and we have around 170 employees. For more information about the Department, please visit [https://www.gu.se/en/political-science](https://www.gu.se/en/political-science). The Department of Political Science now invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship within _Dying Occupations and Political Change_ (OCCPOL), a five-year research project funded by an ERC Advanced Grant and led by Professor Johannes Lindvall. OCCPOL investigates how the decline and disappearance of occupations shape political participation, political opinions, and party choices in democracies. The project examines the political consequences of occupational decline and disappearance in four countries, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, from the late nineteenth century to the present. A central goal is to create a new comparative data resource tracing long-term occupational changes in these countries and use it to conduct analyses of political trends and events. This part of the project will combine historical censuses, labor-force surveys, official registers, and other sources, using transparent coding protocols, computational methods, and careful validation. The resulting data will support research within OCCPOL and will be documented for wider scholarly use. The postdoctoral fellow will be an intellectual partner in developing this key part of the project. The position offers substantial opportunities to shape the project conceptually and methodologically, pursue original research using the new data, and develop a distinctive scholarly profile within the broad themes of OCCPOL. ## **Subject area** Political science ## **Subject area description** Political science is the study of politics. ## **Duties** Employment as a postdoctoral fellow aims to give the employee an early opportunity, after completing their doctoral degree, to develop their independence as a researcher and to create the conditions for further qualifications. A postdoctoral fellow must mainly conduct research. Teaching may be included in the duties but may account for no more than one-fifth of working time. The postdoctoral fellow will pursue original research on occupational decline and political change within the broader framework of OCCPOL. They will have substantial intellectual autonomy to develop and pursue their own research agenda within this framework, conducting research independently and in collaboration with other members of the project. They will have opportunities to lead their own studies, publish independently and collaboratively, and present their research at seminars, workshops, and international conferences. The position is designed to combine intellectual autonomy with close collaboration and regular intellectual exchange within the project, with the aim of supporting the postdoctoral fellow in developing their own scholarly profile and research agenda. As part of this research, the postdoctoral fellow will play a central coordinating role, together with the Principal Investigator and other members of the team, in developing OCCPOL's comparative data infrastructure. This will be a shared empirical resource, developed collaboratively and used by members of the project in their individual and joint research. The postdoctoral fellow will participate actively in the substantive and methodological choices involved in its development, including the collection, processing, harmonization, validation, and documentation of occupational data across the four project countries. This work may include developing coding protocols and reproducible data workflows; identifying and evaluating relevant historical and contemporary data sources; developing and applying appropriate computational methods for classifying occupational information; assessing changes in occupational classifications over time; and developing approaches to quality assurance. The specific methods and approaches used will be shaped by the research questions, the characteristics of the available data, and the postdoctoral fellow's interests and expertise. The postdoctoral fellow will be an active participant in shaping the intellectual development of OCCPOL. The project is intended to provide an environment in which independently initiated and collaborative research reinforce one another, and in which new research questions and approaches can emerge as the work develops. The postdoctoral fellow will work closely with the Principal Investigator and other members of the team while retaining substantial scope to develop their own research within the project. The precise balance between independently initiated research, collaborative research, and shared data development will be agreed jointly as the project develops, considering both the postdoctoral fellow's evolving research interests and expertise and the goals of the wider project. ## **Eligibility** The eligibility criteria