Postdoctoral Researcher in computational social science

The Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki invites applications for the position of

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCES

for a fixed-term appointment from 1 September, 2026 to 29 February, 2028, or as agreed.

We are seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher with expertise in computational social science, particularly text-as-data approaches, to contribute to the next phase of Seeing Like a Tech Firm: Advocacy in the Era of Platform Capitalism (SEE TECH) project led by Academy Research Fellow, Dr. Matti Ylönen.

About the project

SEE TECH examines how large technology firms ("Big Tech") influence political processes, regulation, and public discourse, with a particular focus on Europe. The project combines political economy, international political sociology, and regulatory studies to analyze how firms shape policy agendas, knowledge production, and governance frameworks.

To date, the project has conducted over 100 elite interviews and produced early academic outputs on corporate influence and platform governance. The next phase of the project expands the empirical scope through computational and digital methods, enabling large-scale analysis of corporate advocacy, lobbying, and discourse.

More information: www.see-tech.fi

Position summaryThe position offers substantial intellectual independence and the opportunity to shape a cutting-edge research agenda at the intersection of political economy and data science. While we do have some specific ideas, the exact research tasks could also be partly tailored based on the key expertise of the selected applicant.

The successful candidate will:

Work with large-scale text corpora (e.g. our interview data, submissions, policy documents, corporate publications, media content)

Possibly conduct network analysis

Integrate computational findings with qualitative and interview-based research already conducted in the project