[Air-L] postdoc position at Knight-Georgetown Institute

[Leticia Bode]

Dear all,

The Georgetown Initiative on Technology and Society is seeking a
Postdoctoral Fritz Research Fellow to work with the Knight–Georgetown
Institute (KGI) and Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT) Program with
research interests at the intersection of *technology policy, computational
methods, and research translation*. The Postdoc Fellow is expected to
engage only in research.

The postdoc will be part of a project led by Meg Jones (CCT), Peter Chapman
(KGI), and Leticia Bode (both) that seeks to better understand how, when,
how much, what kind, and under what circumstances empirical research is
integrated into tech policy litigation in the United States at the federal
and state level.

Specifically we seek to establish how often and what types of research are
currently being used in the process around tech policymaking. While there
are dozens of entities that engage in tech policymaking, we will focus our
initial efforts at understanding how research is used in several judicial
settings within state and federal courts deciding platform governance cases
(e.g, social media regulation, consumer protection and product liability
cases, design code cases, age verification cases, etc).

Specific project aims related to this goal include understanding:

What research is cited in briefs for platform governance claims at each
level of state and federal cases? What research is cited in amicus briefs
for platform governance claims at each level of state and federal cases?
What are the attributes of that research? How have courts used (or not
used) that research? Has it been ignored, incorporated, interpreted,
determinative, emphasized, etc?

The postdoc is expected to provide support for all aspects of the project,
including overall design, project management, mentorship of at least two
student workers on the project, qualitative data collection and analysis,
quantitative data collection and analysis, large-scale data scraping from
relevant content, extraction of relevant information from those bodies of
data, and writing of relevant findings. The ideal candidate will have
demonstrated experience with at least several of the following: current
tech policy debates and processes, data scraping, natural language
processing, qualitative interviewing and analysis, survey research and
analysis, student mentorship, and project management.

The postdoc is expected to run bi-weekly meetings with the project team and
attend weekly KGI meetings, as well as participate in KGI events and the
broader Georgetown Tech & Society community.

Fellowships are for one academic year and summer (August 1, 2025 – July 31,
2026, with a possible earlier start date), with the general expectation of
renewal for one additional year. Fellows will receive a stipend (range
$70,000 - $90,000) and a $5,000 research fund plus health insurance
coverage and will be provided working space.

For a complete description of the listing and information on how to apply -
please see: https://apply.interfolio.com/160084

Feel free to contact us for more information.

The deadline for the first review of applications is January 15, 2025

All the best,

Meg, Pete, and Leticia