Offer Description
University for Continuing Education Krems
The University for Continuing Education Krems specializes in part-time academic continuing education. As a public university, it works with its expertise in teaching and research to overcome societal challenges. The university combines many years of experience in continuing academic education with innovation and the highest quality standards in research and teaching.
As an employer, we offer around 700 employees an inspiring and flexible working environment in the unique Wachau World Heritage region.
The Department of Migration and Globalization at the University for Continuing Education Krems (Austria) invite s applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher (Post-Doc). The position is full-time for five years and is expected to start on 1 November 2026 or shortly thereafter.
We are seeking an outstanding candidate with a strong international publication record, demonstrated project experience, preferable in a coordination role, and a clear interest in theory development. The successful candidate will act as a coordinating postdoctoral researcher, working closely with the Principal Investigator (PI) on both the intellectual and organizational leadership of the project.
40 hrs./week
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Project Description
This position is part of the ERC-funded project Ethics in Action: Navigating Ethical Dilemmas of Migrant Solidarity, led by Professor Julia Mourão Permoser.
Focusing on policies and practices of solidarity with irregular and precarious migrants, Ethics in Action develops a novel, actor-centred framework to understand how policymakers and civil society actors navigate ethical dilemmas in real-world contexts. Rather than treating ethics as abstract theory, the project investigates ethics in action—that is, the everyday processes of decision-making, justification, and compromise through which political actors respond to morally conflicting situations.
The project brings together political theory and empirical research in an innovative way. Through in-depth qualitative fieldwork across multiple world regions, it examines how five different types of actors—national policymakers, local policymakers, labour unions, faith-based organizations and facilitators of movement—experience, interpret, and respond to ethical dilemmas in practice. These cases are systematically compared across Global North and Global South contexts to identify patterns and develop a new theory of decision-making under conditions of value conflict.
By focusing on political agency under constraint, Ethics in Action opens up a new research agenda that goes beyond existing approaches to polarization and value conflict. It shows how actors continue to act—even under conditions of deep moral tension—and how their decisions reshape their political identities and the meaning of solidarity itself.
The project team includes the PI, a coordinating postdoctoral researcher, and five researchers (postdoctoral fellows and PhD candidates), each leading a complementary empirical work package. Together, the team will generate comparative insights that feed into a shared theoretical framework.
Your Role in the Project
You will act as a key intellectual partner to the PI, contributing to both the coordination and the conceptual development of the project. This includes co-supervising early career researchers and advancing the project’s research design and theoretical framework.
You will co-lead three central work packages —Overall Comparison and Theory Development, Visual Methods and Artistic Dissemination, and Stakeholder and Society Dialogue—in close collaboration with the PI.
A central component of this role is to contribute to the project’s overarching theory-building agenda by integrating comparative empirical insights into a coherent analytical framework.
You will also be expected to develop an independent research agenda and contribute actively to the life of the department.
This is a unique opportunity to :
* Design and pursue your own research agenda within a major ERC project
* Contribute to innovative theory-building at the intersection of empirical research and political theory
* Work at the interface of academic research, artistic practice, and societal engagement
* Collaborate within an ambitious, international, and interdisciplinary team
* Gain high-level experience in project coordination, publishing, and academic leadership
* Build an international academic profile and prepare for a future professorship
* Co-coordination and contribution to the refinement and implementation of the overall research design
* Develop an independent research agenda aligned with the project
* Lead comparative and theory-building work across cases
* Publish high-quality research in leading international journals
* Contribute to major collective outputs, including an edited volume and a practitioner-oriented handbook
* Coordinate collaboration with academic partners and non-academic stakeholders
* Co-supervise PhD candidates and mentor junior researchers
* Organize conferences, workshops, and public engagement activities
Your profile
We require evidence of the following qualifications for the application:
* Completed PhD in a social science discipline (completion certificate must be available by 15 October 2026)
* Research experience in migration studies
* Excellent international publication record (e.g. publications in high-ranked journals)
* Familiarity with debates on the ethics of migration policy and the ability to link empirical research with political theory
* Experience working in research projects
* Experience with comparative research designs and theory development
* Excellent analytical and writing skills
* Willingness to relocate to Krems or the surrounding area
In addition, the following criteria are desirable:
* Experience in grant writing and project management
* Experience working with sensitive data and ethical research standards
* Experience with artistic or visual methods of social research
* Experience in participatory methodologies, citizen science, or stakeholder engagement
* Experience in the coordination of research projects
Your perspective
* Full time (40 hours/week) initially limited to 30 September 2031
* Minimum salary of EUR 5,014.30 gross per month (14x) on a full-time basis
* The opportunity to shape your own research agenda within a high-profile ERC project
* A vibrant and collaborative research environment at an internationally connected institution
* Support for fieldwork, publications, and international networking
* Close collaboration with leading scholars in migration politics and political theory
* A strong platform for career development and future academic opportunities
* Innovative working environment at the Campus Krems
* Flexible working hours and the option to work from home two days a week
* Comprehensive internal training and coaching opportunities
* A wide range of support services to help balance work and family life
* Various workplace health promotion programs as well as offerings from the University Sports Institute (USI)
The University for Continuing Education Krems sees high innovation potential in the diversity of its employees and is committed to diversity as a guiding principle. We therefore explicitly invite people with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses who meet the required profile criteria to apply for the position.
* A 2–3 page research outlining your ideas for how you intend to pursue your own research agenda within the ERC project
* Copies of degrees and transcripts
* Two writing samples (preferably academic articles, if possible single-authored)
The research outline should include:
* A research topic and research question
* The proposed research design and methodology
* References to relevant theoretical and empirical literature, including additional sources beyond the project proposal
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