Ali Çarkoğlu

Koç University in Istanbul, Türkiye is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC-funded EMERGEPOL project, Emerging Issues and the Dynamics of Affective Polarization . The position sits in the Department of International Relations and is embedded in an international, interdisciplinary environment focused on political behaviour, public opinion, computational social science, survey methodology, NLP, machine learning, and Bayesian modelling. The project examines how emerging political issues such as immigration, climate change, and European sovereignty gain salience, are framed by elites and the media, and develop into drivers of affective polarization. Using a comparative design across Ireland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Türkiye, the project combines multilingual NLP pipelines, three-wave panel surveys with embedded survey experiments, and machine-learning approaches to build a Polarization Potential Index. The successful candidate will help lead the survey-based and causal-modelling strand of EMERGEPOL. Main responsibilities include designing and harmonising three-wave panel instruments, coordinating fieldwork with panel providers, developing and estimating Dynamic Bayesian Network models, and analysing how issue exposure, framing, belief updating, partisan attachment, and affective polarization evolve over time. The post also involves comparative analysis across the four country cases, contribution to open and harmonised datasets, publication in peer-reviewed journals, conference presentation, workshop organisation, and mentoring of doctoral researchers. The post is based at Koç University in Istanbul, with collaboration and potential research stays across the partner country teams. Applicants should hold a PhD in political science, comparative politics, political psychology, sociology, or a closely related field, and should have strong quantitative skills in survey research and causal inference. English fluency is essential. Experience with R and/or Python, Bayesian methods, panel or longitudinal design, and survey experiments is expected. This is a full-time position initially for three years, with the possibility of renewal for up to five years in total following positive evaluation. The role is associated with an ERC Advanced Grant and includes a competitive salary, social benefits, a dedicated research budget, and relocation/work-permit support for international candidates. Application deadline: 30 November 2026 at 17:00 (Africa/Tunis). Apply by email to [email protected] with a CV, motivation letter, English writing sample, and a short statement outlining how you would approach the project.

Koç University in Istanbul, Türkiye is offering a full-time postdoctoral researcher position in Computational Social Science (NLP & Machine Learning) within the Department of International Relations. The post sits in the ERC-funded project EMERGEPOL (“Emerging Issues and the Dynamics of Affective Polarization”), which examines how newly emerging political issues become salient, are framed by elites and media, and can fuel affective polarization across different national contexts. The successful candidate will help build the project’s multilingual text-as-data and forecasting backbone. The main research tasks include developing multilingual NLP pipelines for Turkish, Hungarian, Dutch, and English corpora; tracking issue emergence across parliamentary debates, manifestos, news media, and social platforms; building sentiment, moral-framing, and semantic-polarization measures; constructing network-based features from text-linked interaction data; and developing machine-learning models to forecast the “polarization potential” of emerging issues. The role also contributes to the project’s Polarization Potential Index (PPI) and its web-based dissemination tool. This is an interdisciplinary position connecting political science, computational social science, NLP, machine learning, network analysis, survey research, and Bayesian modelling. The project is comparative and transnational, with team members working on Ireland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Türkiye. Koç University will serve as the home base, with possible collaboration and research stays across project teams. Applicants should hold a PhD, or be very close to completion, in computational social science, computer science, data science, computational linguistics, or political science with strong computational methods. Strong Python skills, experience with large text corpora, reproducible pipelines, and NLP/ML methods are expected, along with fluency in English and attention to research ethics and GDPR requirements. Experience with one or more of the project languages is an advantage, as are skills in social-media data collection, graph neural networks, or temporal models. The appointment is initially for three years and may be renewed for a further two years following positive evaluation. The position includes a competitive salary, social benefits, and a dedicated research budget covering computing, data acquisition, fieldwork, and international conference travel. The planned start date is 1 January 2027, or as soon as possible thereafter. Applications are due by 2026-11-30 . To apply, candidates should use Koç University’s online application system and submit a CV with publication list and referee contacts, a motivation letter, an English writing sample, and a short project statement. Informal enquiries can be sent to Prof. Ali Çarkoğlu at [email protected] .