Vacancy for one research assistant in democratic innovations and multi-level governance

The Institute of Political Science at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain - ISPOLE) is hiring a researcher for one year on the projects “Rethinking Co-creation of Digital and Environmental Policy in Systems of Multilevel Governance” (RECODE) and “Scaling Democratic Innovations” (SCALEDEM) – funded via HORIZON EUROPE grants from the European Commission.

Required profile

• Holder of a master’s degree (or a PhD degree, see below for working time), in political or social sciences
• Excellent command of the literature on deliberative democracy and democratic innovations testified by scientific publications
• Good organisational and time management skills
• Ability to work both independently and in a team
• Professional command of English with advanced writing skills in English
• Experience in bringing together theory and practice is an asset

Offer

This is a call for applications for a research assistant position for one year: 

• Hiring scheme: 12-months contract of limited duration
• Working time:
  • If pre-doctoral researcher: full time (100%).
  • If post-doctoral researcher: part-time (50%) but could be up to 100% if in a situation of international mobility1.
• Funding: European Commission
• Salary: according to UCLouvain wage schemes

The researcher will become an active member of the UCLouvain team that is part of the research projects “Scaling Democratic Innovations” (SCALEDEM) and “Rethinking Co-creation of Digital and Environmental Policy in Systems of Multilevel Governance” (RECODE). These projects offer a stimulating working environment in a dynamic and international research team. 

The researcher will be based at the UCLouvain campus in Louvain-la-Neuve, where they will have an office and relevant administrative support. They will have no compulsory teaching obligations but will be allowed to engage in a limited amount of teaching if this is desired and judged appropriate for their academic development. They will be expected to contribute to collective work on the project, and to lead and publish collective research outputs. UCLouvain implements an HR policy that promotes gender equality and is attentive to and respectful of diversity and equal opportunities.

The starting date is 1 December 2024.

The deadline for applications is 15 October 2024. After a first document-based selection round, the short-listed candidates will be interviewed via Teams (on 21 October afternoon, 22 October morning, 23 October morning or 24 October 2024).

Interested?

Questions   regarding   the offer can be addressed   to  Dr. Jehan Bottin (jehan.bottin@uclouvain.be) and Dr. Min Reuchamps (min.reuchamps@uclouvain.be).

Applications (only in English) should include:

• a letter of motivation
  • a full CV (including a list of publications)
  • a document written in English by oneself composed of:
    • two pages where you sketch an analytical framework of scaling democratic innovations along four dimensions (see below the description of the SCALEDEM project) with a dozen of relevant references
    • one page where you outline how you would achieve the development of this full analytical framework into a deliverable of the SCALEDEM project, within a period of six months
  • three samples of your writing (preferably single-authored publications) that demonstrate an excellent command of the literature on deliberative democracy

Please send the above documents via e-mail in one single PDF file entitled Application_Research Assistant_[NAME] to Dr. Jehan Bottin (jehan.bottin@uclouvain.be), on 15 October 2024 (noon) at the latest.

Complaint mechanism:

Should you have a complaint regarding this vacancy and the selection process, please write to recherche-ispole@uclouvain.be at UCLouvain - ISPOLE.

Context of the projects

Scaling Democratic Innovations (SCALEDEM)

SCALEDEM’s objective to unlock the uptake of democratic innovations born in R&I actions, in particular stemming from EU-funded projects. In particular, SCALEDEM will help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers assess opportunities and barriers for scaling democratic innovations along four dimensions: scaling high (impacting laws and policy), out (impacting greater more and new people), deep (impacting cultures and identities) and in (impacting processes’ quality). This will be achieved by developing a scaling infrastructure, including policy roadmaps and an actionable Compass for scaling democratic innovations, based on a Grounded Theory of Scaling. As an EU-funded Coordination and Support Action project, SCALEDEM put a strong emphasis on overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge, identify opportunities to increase synergies for capacity-building actions to policymakers, practitioners and researchers, and expand the societal and political impact of EU-funded research in the EU and countries from Global Europe. The project will deploy two ambitious Scaling Grounds in the forms of Twinning and Pilot Programmes. The Scaling Grounds test and encourage the uptake of democratic innovations by new end users, scaling the societal impact of those solutions further. Together with the Translation Hub, the Scaling Grounds form the backbone of the project’s scaling infrastructure: through generous cascade-funding, iterative feedback, networking opportunities and capacity-building mechanisms, they seek to expend the community of democratic innovations’ end-users to non-usual suspects and support the replicability and adaptability of these innovations in new operational environments.

UCLouvain is a key partner, in this Consortium of 13 partners led by the practitioner organization Missions Publiques (France). Other partner countries include Italy, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Slovakia as well as Colombia (associated partner). The postdoctoral researcher will be contributing more specifically to one of the project’s research work packages, on the development of a Knowledge-based Theory of Scaling.

In particular, the researcher will:

• Support the establishment of a comprehensive knowledge base of innovative democratic solutions stemming from relevant R&I projects, in partnership with the Nets4Dem project to avoid further knowledge fragmentation
  • Develop a robust and interdisciplinary analytical framework to identify scalable innovative solutions for democracy, identify conditions that facilitate scaling processes and potential barriers, validate and refine the framework through application to selected R&I project outcomes.
    • Develop a grounded theory of scaling by analyzing conditions, barriers, and success factors for scaling democratic innovations across the four dimensions of scalability identified by the project. UCLouvain is responsible for the exploration of the “scaling out” dimension, which examines the potential for replication and dissemination of solutions beyond their original contexts.
    • Participate in the dissemination of the SCALEDEM project, joining the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary community of practices establish and engage with a global community of end users (practitioners, policymakers and researcher) and nurture strategic partnerships with relevant R&I projects and initiatives.
    • Support the implementation of the Scaling Grounds, by facilitating the replicability and adaptability of solutions through the winning and pilot programs. 

Candidates will be working closely with the European University Institute and other international partners to achieve these objectives.

Rethinking Co-creation of Digital and Environmental Policy in Systems of Multilevel Governance” (RECODE)

Rethinking Co-creation of Digital and Environmental Policy in Systems of Multilevel Governance (RECODE MLG) is a Horizon Europe project on Multilevel governance in times of Digital and Climate Transitions. The goal of this project is to promote a just, inclusive and democratic transition to a sustainable and digital future by showing how this ‘twin transition’ can be governed effectively within the EU multilevel governance (MLG) system. The project investigates co-creation as a process that can precisely achieve this objective, by proactively involving multiple actors – including policymakers, stakeholders, citizens and volunteers – in a collaborative endeavour, to identify both problems and solutions related to the twin transition. RECODE MLG brings together leading experts on MLG, sustainability politics, digitalisation, co-creation, democratic theory and deliberative innovation with civil society, industry stakeholders and policymaking representatives. It assesses governance structures at three critical sites of twin transition and designs and implements four co-creation labs in order to advance state-of-the-art and produce policy recommendations and a practical ‘tool-kit’ to support inclusive policymaking on twin transition in MLG.

UCLouvain is contributing more specifically to one of the project’s work packages: WP7 (Experimentation with Co-Creation Labs). The overall objective of this WP is to experiment with co-creation labs based on the insights of the empirical WPs. Its main tasks involve putting MLG co-creation into practice. In this WP, the researchers will practice and experiment with co-creation, attending carefully to gender equality and inclusion of the most affected groups. The team will organise, manage and analyse four co-creation labs, organized around two main dimensions in order to experiment with different MLG co-creation dynamics: one the one hand, online and offline co-creation labs and, on the other hand, situating the MLG in a single country or a cross-border region. The two co-creation labs sited in a cross-border region will have translators working to facilitate communication.

The project is led by the University of Agder. The partner countries are Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium.

This vacancy is published on the condition that the respective grant agreements between the institutions involved in the RECODE and SCALEDEM projects, which are currently being finalized, are signed.

1 Two cumulative conditions must be met in order to be in a situation of international mobility:
- the researcher should not have resided or carried out their main activity (employment, studies, etc.) in Belgium for more than 24 months during the last three years immediately preceding the starting date;
- the starting date must begin no later than six years, from date to date, after obtaining the PhD degree.