Postdoc in Urban-Rural Political Polarisation, Social Networks, Big Data and Machine Learning at University of Cambridge University of Cambridge in United Kingdom

University of Cambridge is hiring a postdoc / Research Associate for the BRIDGE project in the Department of Land Economy.

The project, led by Dr Davide Luca, investigates urban-rural political polarisation and how economic and political divides form and evolve. The successful candidate will join an international, interdisciplinary ERC team and contribute especially to Work Package 3 on how social networks and schooling shape individual outlooks.

The research involves large-scale social network data, Big Data, Machine Learning, and Large Language Model techniques to develop new measures of social connectedness from anonymised online platform data. This is a strong fit for candidates with interests in political science, sociology, geography, statistics, and computational social science.

The post is fixed-term for 24 months and is supported by a five-year, €2 million ERC Consolidator Grant. The role is primarily intended for post-doctoral researchers, though exceptionally strong pre-doctoral candidates whose doctoral work closely matches the project may also be considered.

Deadline: Midnight on 3 August 2026.

How to apply: Apply online via the University of Cambridge recruitment portal using the job reference JP50172. Informal enquiries may be sent to [email protected].