Dear Colleagues,

I am recruiting for a one-year fully funded research assistant position involving NLP/ quantitative methods in text analysis. I would be grateful if you could share this ad with anyone interested.

I am available for any questions potential applicants might have.

Thanks a lot!

Kind regards,

Stephanie

*One-year fulltime research assistant position at University College Dublin*

*Start Date* 1st September 2025

*Duration* 12 months

*Deadline* 22nd May, noon IST

*Full ad* https://my.corehr.com/pls/coreportal_ucdp/apply?id=018505

University College Dublin is currently recruiting a researcher to implement natural language processing (NLP) tools on interviews and speeches in Arabic.

The research assistant will support the development of tools to identify and analyse so-called cognitive maps (Axelrod 1976). Dornschneider and Henderson (2016, 2024) and Dornschneider (2019) have developed tools for the computational analysis of cognitive maps. What is needed is a set of tools to infer cognitive maps from natural language.

This Irish Research Council funded project investigates the role of women in Muslim resistance movements. The cognitive mapping analysis has several main objectives: 1- to show typical behavioral decisions (e.g. to join a resistance a movement) described by the interviewees; 2- to identify common reasoning processes related to these decisions; and 3- to trace the role of religious beliefs in these reasoning processes.

The research assistant will work with the Principal Investigator, Dr. Stephanie Dornschneider-Elkink, to deliver the research objectives of the project. Tasks will include but are not limited to web scraping, POS tagging, and OCR, as well as the checks necessary to review the accuracy of the automated processes. Knowledge of Arabic is not necessary, but a plus.

Applicants should submit a CV, a cover letter, as well as a piece of well-documented NLP-related sample code in R or Python.

Principal duties

· Work under the supervision of the Principal Investigator to implement the objectives of the IRC project

· Apply quantitative text analysis to Arabic text/interviews

· Help generate and analyse cognitive maps

· Web scraping

· OCR

· Quality checking

· Report to the team and PI on a regular basis

Mandatory requirements

· Some undergraduate or graduate-level training in quantitative text analysis/NLP

· Preferably a political science, data science, and/ or computer science background

· Experience with programming in R and/ or Python

· Ability to work independently and take the initiative to implement the outlined tasks

· Candidates must demonstrate an awareness of equality, diversity and inclusion agenda.

*References*

Axelrod, R. (ed.). 1976. Structure of decision: The cognitive maps of political elites. Princeton: Princeton university press.

Dornschneider-Elkink, S. and Henderson, N., 2024. Repression and Dissent: How Tit-for-Tat Leads to Violent and Nonviolent Resistance. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 68(4), 756-785.

Dornschneider, S., 2019. High‐Stakes Decision‐Making Within Complex Social Environments: A Computational Model of Belief Systems in the Arab Spring. Cognitive Science, 43(7), p.e12762. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12762

Dornschneider, S. and Henderson, N., 2016. A computational model of cognitive maps: Analyzing violent and nonviolent activity in Egypt and Germany. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 60(2), pp.368-399.