About the Organization

The Centre for Socio-Political Data (CDSP) is a research and support unit founded in 2005 by Sciences Po and the CNRS. 

As one of France’s leading centers for social science data production and management, the CDSP provides comprehensive services to the scientific community, including data collection, processing, dissemination, and the development of digital solutions. 

The center also contributes to research on qualitative and quantitative methods. Its expertise is demonstrated through flagship projects such as the French component of the European Social Survey (ESS) and the ELIPSS longitudinal web panel.

Job Description

We are seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher to collaborate with Professors Emiliano Grossman and Jan Rovny on the Dynamics of Issue Evolution project, funded by Open AI. 

The project aims to study the long-term historical evolution of key political issues—such as immigration, the environment, budgets, and state administration — addressing questions such as:

• How and when do specific issues emerge in public discourse?
• How do political issues evolve in terms of framing, tone, and positional distribution?
• Who are the actors introducing these issues, and how do their framings, tones, and positions change over time?
• How do competitive environments or exogenous factors influence issue evolution?
• How have these dynamics shifted over time, considering institutional and technological
  developments?

The Postdoctoral Researcher will initially focus on collecting textual data to build corpora of political documents, including parliamentary debates, speeches, and press articles, ideally dating back to the 19th century. Subsequently, the researcher will work with Sciences Po’s research engineers to apply text-as- data methods, including the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools, for data analysis. 

The ultimate goal is to prepare high-impact publications in collaboration with Professors Grossman and Rovny, as well as individually.

Profile

• PhD in Political Science, Sociology, Data Science, or related fields (obtained or to be defended
  within 6 months of application).
• Excellent programming skills in R and/or Python.
• Strong data collection skills, including web scraping.
• Experience with text-as-data methods (e.g., dictionary analysis, supervised machine learning, topic modeling, word embeddings, large language models).
• Interest or prior knowledge in the study of political competition from a historical perspective is a plus.
• Excellent written and oral English skills (French not required).
• Strong interest in academic research, ideally demonstrated by international publications and/or research project collaboration.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and collaboratively in an international team.

Position details

Location
Paris, France

Job title
Postdoctoral Researcher (M/F)

Contract type
Fixed-term contract

Contract duration
24 months

Work schedule
Full-time

Application Process

• Required: Cover letter and CV to be emailed to emiliano.grossman@sciencespo.fr and jan.rovny@sciencespo.fr
• Deadline: 15 February 2026.
• Interviews will be conducted with Emiliano Grossman and Jan Rovny.

This job offer is also available in French.