Two PhD Positions in Theoretical Political Science and Philosophy, Bamberg and Bayreuth (Germany)

Two, three-years PhD positions (65%, 13 TV-L) in Theoretical Political Science and in Philosophy, at the University of Bamberg and the University of Bayreuth.

The positions will be affiliated with the Chair of Theoretical Political Science (Prof. Dr. Johannes Marx) at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg or the Chair of Philosophy I (Prof. Dr. Olivier Roy) at the University of Bayreuth, as part of the research project "Simulating Collective Agency" (SColA), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

The SColA project aims at identifying mechanisms underlying the emergence and stability of collective agency. It will, first, investigate the role of shared beliefs and intentions for the emergence and stability of collective agents and, second, it will study how these shared attitudes contribute to the stability, growth or decline of autonomy in such groups. The project will do so through a computational and game-theoretical study of so-called ‘team reasoning’ (Bacharach, 2006), an extension of classical non-cooperative game theory in which the players can reason either individually or as a team member. By means of computer simulations, the project will try to identify conditions that foster the emergence and stability of team reasoning.

The successful applicants will be embedded in a lively research community centered around a cluster of six research projects on collective agency, each employing one PhD student or Postdoctoral Researcher, at the University of Bamberg. In that context, the theoretical analysis in SColA will be brought to bear on findings in the other projects, by calibrating the models’ parameters to the data obtained in those projects.

Candidate profile:
• Initiative and aptitude for teamwork.
• Masters degree in Philosophy or Political Science, with interest in
theoretical questions and computational approaches.
• Familiarly with Decision and Game Theory, and practical philosophy in
the analytic tradition.
• Basic experience with programming.

Applicants should send a cover letter, CV including publication list, and two recommendation letters as one pdf document to sekretariat.poltheorie at uni-bamberg.de. For questions about the position please write directly to Johannes Marx (johannes.marx@uni- bamberg.de) and Olivier Roy (olivier.roy at uni-bayreuth.de)