post-doc, Maastricht

from "HUMANIST"

NanoBubbles ERC Synergy grant 4-year postdoc position at Maastricht University

The NanoBubbles ERC Synergy project aims to understand how, why, and when science fails to correct itself. The picture of science that many scientists and members of the public hold is that science is self-correcting; scientists are human and may make errors, but these will be cleared up in time. In practice, though, scientists who attempt to correct dubious claims often experience resistance and threats to their careers; while claims that have been disproven often continue to circulate for years or even decades.

There is an established literature in scientometrics/library science/computer science dedicated to quantitative and sometimes automated tracing of linkages between different texts (journal articles, patents) and people, e.g., through citation analysis. Conversely, there are well-established qualitative techniques in sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, STS, and other fields for tracing the movement of claims. The Maastricht University contribution to the overall NanoBubbles project will be to catalyze integration of these approaches. This four-year postdoctoral position is for a researcher with digital humanities experience who is interested in working with historians and STS scholars (as well as computer scientists and library scientists) to find ways to scale up ethnography and archival research and then to invent entirely new questions that can only be answered (or even asked) by combining digital humanities techniques with these qualitative methods.

More information on NanoBubbles is available at https://nanobubbles.hypotheses.org/

and information on the postdoctoral position can be found at https://www.academictransfer.com/en/304169/postdoctoral-researcher-nanobubbl

es-at-the-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences-history-department-maastricht-

university-1-fte-48-months/

For any inquiries contact Prof. dr. Cyrus Mody:

c.mody@maastrichtuniversity.nl