PhD Position Swiss Parliamentary Networks at ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich is one of the world's leading universities specialising in science and technology. It is renowned for its excellent education, its cutting-edge fundamental research and its efforts to put new knowledge and innovations directly into practice. The research of the Chair of Systems Design can be best described as data driven modelling of complex systems with particular emphasis on social, socio-technical, and socio-economic systems. We are a truly interdisciplinary team of about 15 people from various disciplines (statistical physics, applied mathematics, computer science, social science, engineering). And, yes, we do all the cool stuff, from big data analysis to multilayer network models, from social software engineering to predictions of scientific success – not to forget our research on polarization in political systems, cooperation in animal societies, and life cycles of R&D networks. new position.We are currently looking for a PhD candidate working in the project "Analyzing Co-Sponsorship Networks from 127 Years of the Swiss Federal Assembly", starting as soon as possible or by agreement. The project aims at gaining a deeper understanding of legislative collaboration networks using a data-driven approach. The applicant will work on a newly compiled data set, which comprises of speeches given by members of parliament and information on collaboration networks from 1891 until today. Successful applicants should have a strong academic background in data sciences with an interest in political science. Since the project entails working with German texts, only PhD candidates with excellent German skills are considered.

The successful candidate has graduated from a university and has received a MSc degree (or equivalent) in physics, computer science, or related field, with proven interest in social sciences and interdisciplinary research. Alternatively, he/she has received a MA degree in political science (or sociology) with proven technical skills in data management and quantitative methods. Furthermore, good programming skills in scientific computing languages like Python or R are necessary, knowledge of natural language processing (NLP) tools is a plus.

The candidate should be interested in becoming acquainted with the workings of the Swiss parliament and should have strong abilities to communicate in an interdisciplinary scientific environment. Fluency in German and English is a must, French or Italian language skills are of advantage but are not mandatory.