Research Engineer in Text Analysis of Parliamentary Data at Lund University (Divided Parliaments? Project)
Job Description
Lund University’s Department of Political Science is hiring a research engineer for Divided parliaments? Polarization, Moralization and the Risk of Gridlock, a project funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The project studies how moralising language among members of parliament affects decision-making. It is led by Professor Hanna Bäck with Professor Robert Klemmensen. The engineer will write code to process and analyse motions and debate records, mainly from the Swedish Riksdag, using statistics, machine learning and network analysis. The advert is written in Swedish.
At a glance
- Position: Research engineer (forskningsingenjör), full time, up to one year
- Start: 1 November 2026 or by agreement
- Where: Department of Political Science, Lund
- Reference: PA2026/2598
- Contact: Prof. Hanna Bäck, Hanna.Back@svet.lu.se
- Apply by: 24 September 2026
- Apply: 24 September 2026
About the research engineer post
- Write code to process and analyse motion and debate data from parliaments, above all the Swedish Riksdag
- Analyse large text datasets with statistical and machine learning methods
- Run statistical network analyses
- Contribute to scientific articles based on the project’s results
About the department
Lund’s Department of Political Science works on democracy and democratisation, power and administration, diplomacy, peace and conflict, intelligence analysis, political psychology, gender, environmental politics and welfare. The advert notes that SWERIK, a Swedish research infrastructure for parliamentary records, is relevant material for this project.
What LU is looking for
- A master’s degree in statistics, data science or equivalent
- Experience working with parliamentary data
- Experience with advanced statistical methods for text and other data
- Excellent spoken and written English
- Very good Python programming
Nice to have
- Probabilistic programming languages such as Stan or Pyro
- ML frameworks and GPU computing, such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
- Experience with material in the SWERIK research infrastructure
- Interdisciplinary research collaborations
- Publications on parliamentary behaviour
Pay and location
Lund University sets salaries individually and pays monthly; the advert invites applicants to state their salary expectation. The post is a full-time fixed-term contract of up to one year in Lund.
How to apply
Apply through the official LU page. The closing date is 24 September 2026.
See all our research engineer jobs, or browse more research jobs on ResearchJobs.in.
Hiring institution: Lund University
Official advertisement: lu.varbi.com
How to prepare for this application
- Show the data: describe a parliamentary or legislative dataset you have cleaned and analysed.
- Text methods: give an example of a statistical text model you built, not only an off-the-shelf classifier.
- Salary: the advert asks you to state your expected salary in the application.
- Documents: attach a personal letter, a CV with degrees, work experience and publications, and a copy of your master's diploma.
- Deadline: applications close on 24 September 2026.
About Lund University
Lund University, founded in 1666, is one of Scandinavia's largest universities, with campuses in Lund, Helsingborg and Malmö.
