The Faculty of Science at the University of Leiden is looking for a postdoctoral researcher who will conduct a research on international scientific consortia for the European Research Council Consolidator program project titled Addressing Global Challenges through International Scientific Consortia (INSCONS). The postdoctoral researcher will be working under the supervision of the principal investigator of the project Professor Dr Simcha Jong, who heads the Science Based Business group at the Faculty of Science of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

The INSCONS project is about international scientific consortia such as ITER (nuclear fusion), ALMA (astronomy), and the European Brain Project (neurobiology). We increasingly look at such consortia to come up with scientific and technological advances that are needed to address global challenges in areas such as health, the environment and clean energy. These international consortia represent a novel model for organising scientific research that is rapidly gaining in popularity. Yet, little or no research has been done on them. Organising international scientific consortia represents various challenges. These consortia are highly complex organisations, with budgets that often run in the billions of euros, and work spread out across a multitude of research sites around the world. Moreover, these consortia must navigate (competing) interests of various international stakeholder groups from across the realms of science, policy, and industry. INSCONS is a ground breaking project that will shed light on the challenges involved in organising these consortia, and the broader changes these consortia herald for the scientific endeavour. The project will employ 3 PhD researchers and 2 postdoctoral researchers.

Key responsibilities

The postdoctoral researcher we are looking for will be responsible for a work package within the INSCONS project that examines the relationship between international scientific consortia and the broader scholarly communities these consortia are a part of. To this end, the researcher will conduct a questionnaire-based survey of scientists who are active in specific research fields that different international scientific consortia are embedded in. The researcher will also carry out quantitative network analyses of citation data to examine the co-authorship ties that characterise relationships between scientists who are members of international consortia and scientists who are not members.

Requirements
• A PhD degree in a relevant field such as technology management, science and technology studies, sociology of science;
• Ability to publish research in top-tier international journals;
• Excited about the research goals of the INSCONS project;
• A strong affinity with and interest in quantitative research methods. Experience in conducting network analyses using publication citation datasets and in carrying out large-scale surveys are a pre;
• An ability to work independently in the development of research.

More information can be found here.