SO YOU WANT TO WORK WITH ME… (Guidelines for prospective PhDs, post-docs, et al.)
Version 1.9
Maybe you want to start a PhD under my supervision, or maybe you are looking for a post-doc, or maybe you’re looking for something else.
Please read the following 8 points. It will take you 5 minutes.
1. Is it really me you’re looking for?
I’m a social scientist and I mainly deal with the social, political, and cultural impact of digital technologies. But there are many other academics like me, with different approaches and different foci. This is a brief description of what I do, and this is a list of my publications with links to most of them. Have you read my articles or books? Do they seem relevant to your research/activity/project? If that is the case, please skip to § 3.
If I am not what you’re looking for, that’s ok too. Drop me a line, maybe I can suggest a colleague who would be a better match for you.
2. If you are not certain…
90% of first contacts between supervisors and students, or among prospective collaborators, fail because of poor preparation. Avoid losing your time by writing long letters and project proposals for someone who is not able to work with you.
Don’t hesitate to do a little background check. Make sure to google me, or to check a few useful resources:
3. What I’m looking for
So you know who I am and you know what I do. Now, let’s talk about what I’m looking for. I mainly invite students and researchers to work with me. If you are one of them, please skip to:
– Post-doc researcher → § 4
– Intern (students) → § 5
– Master student → § 6
– Prospective PhD candidate → § 7
– Prospective research assistant → § 8
– Something else → § 9
4. You are a post-doc researcher and you want to work with me.
There are currently no openings for post-doc researchers. Please, come back by Jan. 2020.
5. You are a student interested in an internship and you want to work with me.
There are currently no openings for internships. Please, come back by March 2020.
6. You are a master student and you want to work with me.
If you are a master student and you want me to mentor/supervise your project/master’s thesis feel free to drop me a line. Please make sure to read section 1 and 2 of this page (and maybe even section 7 although your situation differ).
For the year 2019/20, I’m now at full capacity in terms of supervised master students–but it’s worth a try. Next deadline: August/September 2020.
7. You are a prospective PhD candidate and you want to work with me.
For the year 2019/20, I’m now at full capacity in terms of supervised PhD students. Moreover, I have allocated all the available funding… Please, come back by Dec. 2020.
Usually, I’m looking for PhD proposals on the following topics:
a) Online social network analysis (especially social capital, empowerment, autonomy, political movements);
b) The body and ICTs (especially health, nutrition, quantified self, but also gender and sexuality studies);
c) Privacy (especially cultures of anonymity, mass surveillance, economics of personal data);
d) Digital labor (especially micro-work, on-demand platforms, gig economy, invisible online labor, free labor, playbor, global social inequalities, organized labor).
Disciplines: I am a staunch interdisciplinarian. In the past, I have worked with social scientists, economists, geographers, computer scientists, mathematicians. Hell, even biologists and physicists. To tell the truth, I don’t care what’s written on your degree. I care about your skills, your character, and your topic.
Methods: About what you can do… I expect you to have a strong training in empirical research. Maybe you are a good ethnographer, with a strong track record in participant observations, semi-structured interviews, or other qualitative tools. A good knowledge of dedicated qualitative data analysis software is a plus. Or maybe you are a good data cruncher, with a solid statistics/econometrics background, a hands-on knowledge of statistical software suites. Feeling comfortable with doing a bit of coding is also a plus. If you are able to do at least one of the things listed above, I want to hear from you.
I expect to receive from you:
– A curriculum vitae et studiorum
– A short project description (900 words, references included) explaining what you want to do and how this interfaces with my own research agenda).
Be sure to send me your PhD proposal sufficiently early (months in advance…), so we can work out the thorny issue of *funding*.
8. You are looking for a research assistant position.
There are currently no openings for research assistants. Please, come back by Sept. 2020.
9. Have I forgotten something?
You don’t fall in any of the previous categories, but you think that you really want to get in touch. Feel free to drop me a line and we’ll discuss your case.