Kasper Hornbæk

The Section on Human-Centred Computing at the University of Copenhagen is inviting applicants for one or two PhD fellowships in Human-Computer Interaction as part of the Villum Investigator project TRACTION: Theoretical Research in Human-Computer Interaction . The project is awarded to Professor Kasper Hornbæk , and the fellowships sit within a research effort focused on theory-driven work on interactive systems. The project asks how theory can be used to better understand, evaluate, and design interactive systems. It aims to move Human-Computer Interaction beyond a primarily method-driven craft and toward a more cumulative science of theory, generalization, and prediction across technologies, users, and contexts. Research themes include how computers and humans influence each other in interaction, what makes systems valuable to end users, and how theoretical approaches can be used to understand phenomena in interactive computing. The successful PhD student will work in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, in a large and active Human-Centred Computing environment. The section includes around 15 faculty members and a broader community of more than 20 postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, and research assistants. The TRACTION center itself is a six-year initiative with current postdoctoral and PhD researchers, regular meetings, summer schools, workshops, and visiting researchers, creating a lively setting for theory-oriented HCI research. The call explicitly welcomes candidates interested in theory from HCI or related disciplines, including work involving high-level theories, empirical study of theory use in HCI, or the use of LLMs, NLP, AI, XR, or social media systems to study or develop theory. The position is framed around conducting an independent research project under supervision, contributing to the center’s broader research agenda on theory in Human-Computer Interaction.