Postdoc and Research Engineer Position: Digital Data Donation and Computational Social Science

Communication sciences » Science communication

Computer science » Informatics

Computer science » Programming

Organisation/Company University of Amsterdam (UvA) Research Field Communication sciences » Media studies Communication sciences » Science communication Computer science » Informatics Computer science » Programming Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) Final date to receive applications 2 Mar 2026 - 22:59 (UTC) Country Netherlands Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Not Applicable Hours Per Week 30.4 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Are you passionate about computational methods and the collection and analysis of digital trace data? Are you motivated in supporting and collaborating with a growing interdisciplinary network of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) researchers, and helping them answer crucial research questions about the digital society? Are you interested in building, supporting and advancing the Dutch national research infrastructure for SSH research?

Join Us!

The Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and the Digital Data Donation Infrastructure (D3I) are seeking a highly motivated Postdoc / Research Engineer to support, maintain and extend the data donation infrastructure (datadonation.eu) while also applying your skills in collaborations with SSH researchers across the Netherlands, and specifically (for one day per week) in the project cAlibrate (calibratedtrust.eu) understanding how individuals interact with Generative AI in their daily lives.

Project Goals

Digital Data Donation Infrastructure

Individuals generate a rich, diverse set of digital traces as they use digital platforms – such as Google, Instagram, Tik Tok, Whats App, ChatGPT – in their daily lives. The Digital Data Donation Infrastructure (D3I) offers an infrastructure through which individuals can donate their digital traces for academic research in a secure, privacy-protecting and transparent manner. This infrastructure has been used by multiple research projects to answer questions as diverse as how social media influences the well‑being of teenagers, the effects of exposure to political videos on You Tube, how parents share crucial information about their children with rare diseases on Facebook, or how different individuals use Netflix.

cAlibrate

Hundreds of millions of individuals now interact with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the form of conversational agents such as ChatGPT. We know, however, little about how individuals use GenAI‑agents in their personal lives, and even less about under which circumstances they trust these agents. Partnering with GenAI users willing to donate their interaction data to academic research, the project cAlibrate will investigate how individuals use – and calibrate their trust in GenAI across time and contexts of use.

In this combined position of postdoctoral researcher and research engineer, you will develop technical tools and infrastructures as well as do methodological research. In addition, you provide technical support to users of the Digital Data Donation Infrastructure. At the same time, using your methodological skills to analyse Gen AI interaction data and extend the data donation infrastructure to support experimental research, conducting experiments and interventions aimed at empowering users to calibrate their trust in GenAI.

• Be the central point of contact for researchers across the Netherlands interested in conducting data donation studies, supporting and collaborating with research projects (e.g., to configure and deploy data donation workflows)
• Create, maintain and expand a library of scripts for conducting research across the most used digital platforms
• Maintain and expand the library of scripts that allow participants to visualize their data
• Serve as a point of contact for questions regarding security and Data Protection Impact Assessments for data donation studies
• Work together with the software…