Davide Luca

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] .

University of Cambridge is recruiting a postdoc / Research Associate for the BRIDGE project in the Department of Land Economy . The project is led by Dr Davide Luca and is funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant . It investigates urban-rural political polarisation , focusing on how economic and political divides form and evolve across places. The successful candidate will contribute to Work Package 2, examining the drivers of outlook polarisation along the urban-rural continuum and disentangling compositional effects from place effects . Research methods include analysis of large-scale longitudinal household panel surveys , advanced quantitative methods , quasi-experimental designs , and causal inference . Relevant interests include political geography , regional economics , applied causal inference , and related interdisciplinary social science topics. The post is full-time , fixed-term for 24 months , and is primarily intended for post-doctoral researchers , although exceptionally strong pre-doctoral candidates closely aligned with the project may also be considered. Applications close at midnight on 3 August 2026 . Applicants should apply online via the Cambridge recruitment portal and quote reference JP50176 . Informal enquiries: [email protected] . Application process queries: [email protected] .