Author Archives: Simon Jebsen

2 DAAD GSSP Scholarships for Doctoral Candidates

DAAD GSSP Scholarship

The scholarships are available from 1 October 2025 for up to four years.

We welcome applications from candidates aiming to write their doctoral thesis at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences. The school supports scholarship holders through personal mentoring, workshops and support services.

The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences is a multidisciplinary Graduate School funded by the Bavarian State. We seek to stimulate and guide cutting-edge doctoral research on some of the most crucial challenges modern knowledge-based societies are facing.

Specialised research agendas have been grouped into four thematic pillars:
PILLAR 1: Education, personal development and learning from early childhood to adulthood
PILLAR 2: Educational and social inequality across the entire life course
PILLAR 3: Changes in human capital, labour markets and demographic structures and their relation to social structures in modern societies
PILLAR 4: Governance, institutional change and political behaviour

// QUALIFICATION AND REQUIREMENTS:
Requirements
We invite applications by highly qualified graduates from the fields of Sociology, Psychology, Educational Science, Political Science, Labour and Educational Economics, Demography and Statistics. Candidates must hold a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in one of the aforementioned subjects or be very close to completion and should not have lived in Germany for more than 15 months by the start of the membership.

Successful applicants will be required to take up their residence in Bamberg, a city noted for its high quality of life and great conditions for research and study. DAAD Scholarships amount to a monthly stipend of 1,300 EUR, plus other allowances according to the DAAD guidelines.

The Graduate School is committed to diversity, equal opportunities and the compatibility of family and career.

For further information about the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences, the application process and the required documents, please visit our website at
https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bagss/application/daad-scholarship/

The deadline for the submission of your application is Monday, 10 March 2025.

GIGA Training Programm – Winter Term 2024/2025

We are happy to announce the GIGA Training Programme for this winter term. Check below a list of all the courses available.

An Introduction to Critical Discourse Studies: Texts, Contexts and Power
Date and time: 23-24 October 2024, 9: 00 – 17:00 (23.10) and 9:00 – 14:00 (24.10)
Place: GIGA, in person
Register here

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): Performing Basic Analyses using R
Date and time: 28-29 October 2024, 10:00 – 17:00
Place: GIGA, in person
Register here

Introduction to Process Tracing Methods
Date and time: 16-17 December 2024, 10:00 – 17:00
Place: GIGA, in person
Register here

The registration deadline is Friday, 4 October. Please note that you will be informed only afterwards about successful registrations. If you have any related questions, you can contact Maren Wagner at maren.wagner@giga-hamburg.de

GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Neuer Jungfernstieg 21
20354 Hamburg

Grant Writing Stipend for Postdoctoral Researchers

The BAGSS Grant Writing Stipend for Postdoctoral Researchers is awarded for twelve months with the option of a six-month extension, starting from 01 April 2025. In individual cases, the starting date may be up to three months after that if necessary. The stipend amounts to 2,500 EUR per month. In addition, grant recipients are provided with office space and necessary equipment at BAGSS.

During the initial twelve-month period, recipients are expected to develop an excellent project proposal and submit it to an external funding body, e.g. the German Research Foundation (DFG). The grant proposal must include funding for the applicant’s own position afterwards, e.g. via an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group (DFG), an ERC Starting Grant, or a Temporary Position for Principal Investigators (“Eigene Stelle”, DFG). The Stipend is automatically extended for six months if the proposal has been submitted to an external funding body within the initial funding period.

//REQUIREMENTS & QUALIFICATINS

The Bamberg Graduate School welcomes applications from postdoctoral researchers who hold a doctoral degree in the fields of Sociology, Psychology, Education, Political Science, Labour and Educational Economics and Demography. Qualified postdoctoral researchers of related subjects with a strong Social Science background are also encouraged to apply. We invite researchers whose research project fits into the research profile of at least one of our School’s four Pillars. Projects cutting across two (or more) Pillars are equally welcomed.

Specialised research agendas have been grouped into four thematic pillars:
PILLAR 1: Education, personal development and learning from early childhood to adulthood
PILLAR 2: Educational and social inequality across the entire life course
PILLAR 3: Changes in human capital, labour markets and demographic structures and their impact on social structures in modern societies
PILLAR 4: Governance, institutional change and political behaviour

A detailed list of topics that will be supervised by professors in our four pillars can be found here:
www.uni-bamberg.de/bagss/application/topics

The Graduate School is committed to diversity, equal opportunities and the compatibility of family and career within its statutory obligations.

For further information about the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences, the application process and the required documents, please visit our website at
https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bagss/application/grant-writing-stipend-for-postdoctoral-researchers/

The deadline for the submission of your application is Friday, 1 November 2024.

ReMaT – Research Management Training for Early-Stage Scientists on 14 & 15 November 2024 – online event

ReMaT is an intensive, interactive workshop, providing an introduction to a number of key topics relating to research management including project management, grant acquisition, and science and technology related entrepreneurship. ReMaT is especially tailored to meet the needs of early-stage researchers especially from the 2nd year of PhD studies onwards, but is also suitable for others involved in research, or in directing research. ReMaT delivers hands-on practical training in an intensive, yet effective workshop form over two days. There is a strong emphasis on European networking in the way the workshop is delivered: we encourage participation from many different countries and disciplines.

Tutech Innovation which is organising the workshop was founded in 1992 as the technology transfer institute for the Hamburg University of Technology. TUTECH ACADEMY workshops on technology transfer and innovation and research management are designed to equip participants with practical skills for taking on these roles.

More information and registration

ReMaT – research management training for early-career researchers

ReMaT – Research Management Training for Early-Stage Scientists on 14 & 15 November 2024 – online event

ReMaT is an intensive, interactive workshop, providing an introduction to a number of key topics relating to research management including project management, grant acquisition, and science and technology related entrepreneurship. ReMaT is especially tailored to meet the needs of early-stage researchers especially from the 2nd year of PhD studies onwards, but is also suitable for others involved in research, or in directing research. ReMaT delivers hands-on practical training in an intensive, yet effective workshop form over two days. There is a strong emphasis on European networking in the way the workshop is delivered: we encourage participation from many different countries and disciplines.

Tutech Innovation which is organising the workshop was founded in 1992 as the technology transfer institute for the Hamburg University of Technology.
TUTECH ACADEMY workshops on technology transfer and innovation and research management are designed to equip participants with practical skills for taking on these roles.

More information and registration

2 Starter Scholarships for Doctoral Candidates

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS – DOCTORAL CANDIDATES

Starter Scholarship

The scholarships are available from 1 April 2025 for the duration of one year.

We welcome applications from candidates aiming to write their doctoral thesis at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences. A scholarship will enable you to develop an excellent research proposal and submit it to appropriate funding bodies. The graduate school supports scholarship holders through personal mentoring, workshops, and support services.

The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences is a multidisciplinary Graduate School funded by the Bavarian State. We are seeking to stimulate and guide cutting-edge doctoral research on some of the most crucial challenges modern knowledge-based societies are facing.

Specialised research agendas have been grouped into four thematic pillars:

PILLAR 1: Education, personal development and learning from early childhood to adulthood
PILLAR 2: Educational and social inequality across the entire life course
PILLAR 3: Changes in human capital, labour markets and demographic structures and their impact on social structures in modern societies
PILLAR 4: Governance, institutional change and political behaviour

A detailed list of topics that will be supervised by professors in our four pillars can be found here:
www.uni-bamberg.de/bagss/application/topics

// QUALIFICATION AND REQUIREMENTS:
We are inviting applications by highly qualified graduates from the fields of Sociology, Psychology, Educational Science, Political Science, Labour and Educational Economics, Demography and Statistics. Candidates must hold a Master‘s degree (or equivalent) in one of the aforementioned subjects or be very close to completion. International applications are encouraged but successful applicants will be required to take up their residence in Bamberg, a city noted for its high quality of life and great conditions for research and study. Starter scholarships amount to a monthly stipend of 1,568 EUR, plus other allowances according to the Graduate School’s guidelines. The Graduate School is committed to diversity, equal opportunities and the compatibility of family and career within its statutory obligations.

For further information about the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences, the application process and the required documents, please visit our website at
https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bagss/application/starter-scholarships/

The deadline for the submission of your application is Sunday, 15 September 2024.

18th International Research Workshop – Methods for PhD (25 – 30 August 2024)

18th International Research Workshop – Methods for PhD
25 – 30 August 2024
Akademie Sankelmark, Flensburg (Germany)
http://www.phd-network.eu/irws/programme/

PROGRAMME

PARALLEL MORNING SESSION 1 (26 – 28 August 2024)

PARALLEL AFTERNOON SESSION 2 (26 – 28 August 2024)

PARALLEL SESSION 3 (29 August 2024)

WORKSHOP COMMITTEE

  • Dr Wenzel Matiaske, Helmut-Schmidt-University
  • Dr Simon Jebsen, University of Southern Denmark
  • Dr Heiko Stüber, University of Applied Labour Studies

FEES & CREDIT POINTS

599 Euro (with accommodation and meals)

It is possible to get a certificate on five credit points (according to the European Credit Transfer System).

WORKSHOP VENUE

The workshop will take place at the Akademie Sankelmark, Akademieweg 6, in Oeversee (near Flensburg), Germany.

CONTACT & REGISTRATION

Don’t hesitate to contact the workshop committee (irwsnetwork@gmail.com) for any questions.

Please register for the workshop here or on the workshop website.

ORGANIZERS

  • Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the FAF Hamburg, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences
  • Akademie Sankelmark im Deutschen Grenzverein e.V.

SUPPORTERS

  • Europa-Universität Flensburg
  • University of Hamburg, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences
  • University of Hamburg, School of Business
  • Leuphana University Lüneburg, Faculty of Economics

Quantitative Text Analytics

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Assoc. Prof. Dr Fabian Hattke (University of Bergen)

Date: see Workshop Programme

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents: This course provides a basic introduction to the field of quantitative text analysis and natural language processing (NLP). It offers a theoretical introduction and hands-on exercises to explore the potential utility of different approaches to textual data (e.g., closed vs. open vocabulary text mining, sentiment analysis, topic detection, and data visualisation). The course teaches students to extract and process text from documents and to analyse the data by means of quantitative methods.

Software Installations: The course requires no coding or programming skills or prior experience with NLP tools. However, if students want to actively participate in the practical exercises and use their own datasets, they must install the following software on their personal laptops prior to the course.

  • Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) https://www.liwc.app/
    [the cheapest academic license is valid for 30 days and costs €18.95]
  • A generic statistics program like Stata, SPSS, or R.

Recommended literature:

  • Eichstaedt, J. C., Kern, M. L., Yaden, D. B., Schwartz, H. A., Giorgi, S., Park, G., … & Ungar, L. H. (2021). Closed-and open-vocabulary approaches to text analysis: A review, quantitative comparison, and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 26(4), 398-427.
  • Grimmer, J., & Stewart, B. M. (2013). Text as data: The promise and pitfalls of automatic content analysis methods for political texts. Political Analysis, 21(3), 267-297.
  • Hickman, L., Thapa, S., Tay, L., Cao, M., & Srinivasan, P. (2022). Text preprocessing for text mining in organizational research: Review and recommendations. Organizational Research Methods, 25(1), 114-146.
  • Indurkhya, N., & Damerau, F. J. (Eds.). (2010). Handbook of Natural Language Processing
    (Vol. 2). CRC Press Wilkerson, J., & Casas, A. (2017). Large-scale computerized text analysis in political science: Opportunities and challenges. Annual Review of Political Science, 20, 529-544.
  • Wilkerson, J., & Casas, A. (2017). Large-scale computerized text analysis in political science:
    Opportunities and challenges. Annual Review of Political Science, 20, 529-544.

You have to register for the International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Academic English Writing

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr. Jonathan Mole (Europa-Universität Flensburg)

Date: see Workshop Programme

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents: Writing an academic text is a complex task. It requires knowledge of a range of accepted writing conventions and the ability to construct sentences that are not only idiomatically and grammatically correct but also suitably connected to one another. An awareness of the requirements and a degree of practice are necessary.

This workshop is primarily for people who are in the process of writing an academic text in English – a proposal, abstract, article, thesis etc. It allows you to obtain individual feedback on a text you submit before the workshop. In the workshop, assistance will be given to enable you to self-correct any issues which have been highlighted (structure, understanding, logic, language etc.). In addition, an overview of the important characteristics of academic English writing will be discussed. If required, exercises will be available to highlight topics such as academic style (formality, impersonal and objective language, passive voice, caution, nominalisation); structure of a sentence, paragraph and document level; reporting verbs and their forms; coherence and cohesion; and citation and reference styles.

A requirement of students: Please supply a maximum of 2 pages of text at least two weeks before the workshop begins. English language skills at CEFR level B2/C1 are required.

Recommended literature and pre-reading: None.

You must register for the International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Multi-level Modelling with R

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr Daniel Lüdecke (UKE Hamburg)

Date: see Workshop Programme

Max. number of participants: 20-25

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents: The course teaches how to fit simple and multilevel regression models with the statistical programming language R. First, simple linear regression models are introduced to show important basic principles of modelling, like simple regression or interaction terms. Later, the application of these principles in a multilevel framework is demonstrated. Furthermore, the course includes assessment of model fit (quality) and graphical representation and interpretation of complex (mixed) models, which helps communicate complicated models even for a broad audience that is less familiar with such modelling techniques.

Successful participation requires basic knowledge of regression modelling techniques. Students are encouraged to bring their laptops with the free software R (www.r-project.org/) and RStudio (www.rstudio.com) installed. All source code to run the examples is provided in preparation for the course.

Requirements: Knowledge of classic regression modelling (familiarity with terms like dependent and independent variables, linear and logistic regression, estimate, …)

Recommended readings:

  • Harrison, X. A., Donaldson, L., Correa-Cano, M. E., Evans, J., Fisher, D. N., Goodwin, C. E. D., … Inger, R. (2018). A brief introduction to mixed-effects modelling and multi-model inference in ecology. PeerJ, 6, e4794. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4794
  • Bolker, B. M., Brooks, M. E., Clark, C. J., Geange, S. W., Poulsen, J. R., Stevens, M. H. H., & White, J.-S. S. (2009). Generalized linear mixed models: a practical guide for ecology and evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24(3), 127–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.10.008

Required R packages:

  • Modelling: lme4, glmmTMB
  • Summaries: parameters, effectsize
  • Interpretation: ggeffects
  • Visualization: ggeffects, sjPlot, see
  • Model Quality: performance
  • Data preparation: datawizard

The easiest way to install the relevant core packages is running following code:

install.packages(c("easystats", "ggeffects"), dependencies = TRUE)
easystats::install_latest()
easystats::install_suggested()
ggeffects::install_latest()

To install further required packages, run:

install.packages(c("lme4", "glmmTMB", "effects", "emmeans", "modelsummary",
"sjmisc", "sjlabelled", "marginaleffects", "sjPlot", "dplyr", "tidyr"),
dependencies = TRUE)

You must register for the International Research Workshop to participate in this course.