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Carsten Schwemmer

@cschwem2er.bsky.social
1.5K followers 404 following 46 posts

Professor of Computational Social Science, University of Munich | Text & Images | Data Scraping | Data Visualization www.carstenschwemmer.com

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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 19h
@dgskongress2026.bsky.social Liebes Kongressteam, gibt es für heute auch noch die Möglichkeit an der Abendkasse Karten für die Party zu bekommen? Falls nicht: gibt es eine Tauschbörse für Leute die eine Karte haben aber doch nicht teilnehmen können / wollen? #dgs2026
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Heather Urry @heatherurry.io · 24/09/2026
holy fucking shit - see Claude Code (Opus 5.5) rip through a survey eligility test I was really proud of... It requires tracing a route through designated points on a map with server-side Javascript applying eligibility criteria. (1.5 min video)
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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We are hiring at LMU Munich: two PhD positions and one postdoc on democracy, political psychology and computational social science. Start: January 2027 or as soon as possible. We review applications on a rolling basis until October 20. Details below. Reposts very welcome! 1/7
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New preprint! A review article on Generative AI and Society, with the fantastic @thomasdavidson.bsky.social & Danny Karell (smartly not online!) osf.io/preprints/so... The lit on genAI is sprawling and mostly not in sociology. Our goal is to synthesize core themes relevant to sociologists. +
GENERATIVE AI AND SOCIETY
Laura K. Nelson,
Daniel Karell,
and Thomas Davidson

ABSTRACT
For sociologists, generative AI inherits the legacy of earlier computational technologies:  it is an advancement of machine learning already adopted as a methodology, and it intervenes in a society already shaped by algorithmic systems. Yet it also has a dimension that distinguishes it from previous computational methods, and one that makes it inherently sociological: its interactivity. In this review, we conceptualize the interactivity of generative AI and introduce a framework for understanding how it operates across individual, organizational, and institutional life. Specifically, the framework specifies how generative AI expands users, functions as a proxy for society, and expresses power,
both in sociological practice and in society. We conclude by suggesting three dynamics driven by generative AI that sociology will face in the near future: the transformation of scientific practice, the reorganization of social interaction, and the acceleration of algorithmic governance.

Keywords: generative AI,  interaction, computational sociology, methods, algorithms, algorithmic governance
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Heike Klüver @heikekluever.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Nach der Landtagswahl in #Sachsen-Anhalt stellt sich die Frage mit neuer Dringlichkeit: Würde Regierungsverantwortung die AfD „entzaubern“? 📊 Unsere Analyse von 1.307 Regierungen in 57 Demokratien zeigt: Die radikale Rechte wird dadurch nicht schwächer, im Schnitt gewinnt sie rund 6 Prozentpunkte.
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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Ich habe hier zusammengefasst, wie die etablierten Parteien entscheidend zur Stärkung radikal rechter Parteien wie der AfD beigetragen haben. Auch als Reaktion auf den Wahlausgang gestern sehen wir wieder die genau gleichen Narrative aus Politik und Medien. Man bleibt im Teufelskreis gefangen.
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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Den Link zum Text gibt es hier: www.fes.de/themen/demok...
fes.de
Teufelskreis
Impulspapier von Tarik Abou-Chadi: Wie Parteien der demokratischen Mitte auf radikal rechte Parteien reagieren
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Computational Communication Science Lab (CCL) @compcommlab.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
📢 We’re hiring a Senior Scientist in Computational Communication Science at the University of Vienna! Come join our CCL Team and work on building a research infrastructure for #CSS @medem.bsky.social 🤓 📍 Vienna | 4-year position | full-time Apply via the University of Vienna job portal 👇
jobs.univie.ac.at
Senior Scientist (Postdoc)
Senior Scientist (Postdoc)
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
New Blog post: Which Data Repository Should you Use? In light of OSF closing down, I compare Zenodo, Dataverse, ResearchBox, PsychArchive, and local repositories on six important dimensions. If you want to know which to pick: It depends! daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/08/whic...
daniellakens.blogspot.com
Which Data Repository Should You Use?
The Center for Open Science has announced that from November 16, 2026, no new projects can be created on the Open Science Framework. After F...
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Deen Freelon @dfreelon.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
When we pulled data using the same sampling criteria and timeframe, we found zero overlap between the official API and the other two methods in most cases. No videos in common. 😶
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Deen Freelon @dfreelon.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
We got new research out today y'all--if you study TikTok, buckle up because we found something wilddddd... arxiv.org/abs/2608.09917 (accepted @ ICWSM 2027)
arxiv.org
WhichTok? Comparing Three TikTok Data Acquisition Tools
TikTok's global growth has made it a prime platform for both entertainment and political discourse, prompting increased social science research. However, this rapidly evolving research field faces a f...
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J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
When people seek guidance from science, they expect it to work more than once. I have TWO new articles on commercial forces & proprietary models that make science less reliable, with pointers to communities and ideas that might help. This post offers a summary: citizensandtech.org/2026/07/comm...
citizensandtech.org
New Studies: How Commercial Forces Make Science Less Reliable
Computational social science has been distorted by commercial forces, and AI is making it worse.
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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Unfortunately, I can’t make it to #IC2S22026 / #IC2S2 this year, but I hope everyone attending has a great time! For those of you working with Prolific or similar participant platforms, our working paper may be relevant. Maintaining high data quality in CSS will continue to be a major challenge.
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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
1/6 What happens when you tell an AI browser: “Fill out this survey”? It fills out the survey. In our new study, led by @rtopinkova.bsky.social, we tested three consumer-facing agentic browsers without lengthy prompts, custom code, or technical fine-tuning.
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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
1/6 What happens when you tell an AI browser: “Fill out this survey”? It fills out the survey. In our new study, led by @rtopinkova.bsky.social, we tested three consumer-facing agentic browsers without lengthy prompts, custom code, or technical fine-tuning.
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Katrin Auspurg @kauspurg.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
There’s been a lot of buzz around the Borjas/Breznau (2026) paper (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and potential ideological bias in research. We took a closer look at the data. Could there be a "bias in bias research"? Here is what we found: www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10...
econstor.eu
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The German state of Bavaria is trying to ban AI bans in academia. Can't make this shit up
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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
In new joint work with @sebastianjblock.bsky.social, Sandra Jaworeck, Manuel Holz, and Philipp Spielbauer, we examine textual complexity in sociology using a corpus of more than 1,700 full-text articles from major German sociology journals. osf.io/preprints/so...
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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
In new joint work with @sebastianjblock.bsky.social, Sandra Jaworeck, Manuel Holz, and Philipp Spielbauer, we examine textual complexity in sociology using a corpus of more than 1,700 full-text articles from major German sociology journals. osf.io/preprints/so...
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WIRED @wired.com · 04/06/2026
Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. Internally called “NameTag,” it’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones.
wired.com
Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones
Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. It’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones.
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Tobias Rüttenauer @ruettenauer.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
📢 Open positions! I’m recruiting 2 postdocs + 3 PhD positions at C³S, @goetheuni.bsky.social in #ClimateJustice, environmental inequality, #Demography & #ComputationalSocialScience 🌍📊💻 3–4 years + strong support for training🎒 Deadline: 23 June 2026 More: www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794987/Zen...
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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
danah boyd recently argued that social media (as we knew it) is mostly dead; what we have now is parasocial media: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... I agree. Networked social media is disappearing, replaced by a new logic/structure of content creator, creator-centered community, & algorithm.
journals.sagepub.com
Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media - danah boyd, 2026
When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms...
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Lars Leszczensky @leszczensky.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
📢 Job: Research Associate (75%, E13) Join my team at @goetheuni.bsky.social! Looking for a researcher in sociology/network analysis for an @erc.europa.eu project on the interplay of children's & parents' networks. Until end of 2028. Info & apply: 🔗 www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794784/FB0...
uni-frankfurt.de
Goethe-Universität — FB03 - Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Die Goethe-Universität ist eine forschungsstarke Hochschule in der europäischen Finanzmetropole Frankfurt. Lebendig, urban und weltoffen besitzt sie als Stiftungsuniversität ein einzigartiges Maß an E...
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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Early in my PhD, a colleague finishing his (highly rated) dissertation told me he was stuck on the introduction. After years of hard work, he could no longer find an argument for why any of it actually mattered. This stuck with me ever since. A🧵 about this paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Should social science be more solution-oriented? - Nature Human Behaviour
Duncan Watts considers whether many branches of social science could benefit from setting research goals aimed at specific and manageable real-world problems. He gives examples and discusses how more ...
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Katrin Auspurg @kauspurg.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Do researchers share their code upon request? Does running their orginal code on the original data produce the original results? We provide evidence in a new Royal Society Open Science publication. Studying more than 1,000 articles which use data from the European Social Survey, we find that... 🧵
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Noah Greifer @noahgreifer.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
This is the clearest and most accessible introduction to DML I've ever read: arxiv.org/abs/2504.08324 Congrats to the authors @aahrens.bsky.social, @markeschaffer.bsky.social, et al on this amazing paper and great accompanying R package! I'm now DML-pilled.
arxiv.org
An Introduction to Double/Debiased Machine Learning
This paper provides an introduction to Double/Debiased Machine Learning (DML). DML is a general approach to performing inference about a target parameter in the presence of nuisance functions: objects...
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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Very happy to share that I am going to be the new Director of the Democracy unit at the @wzb.bsky.social Berlin Social Science Center. I am excited to form a new research unit on democratic politics and to engage with people in Berlin and elsewhere to make liberal democracy more resilient.
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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Jetzt an der LMU: Master Computational Social Science (M.Sc.) Bewerbungen für die 2. Kohorte sind offen. Der interdisziplinäre Studiengang verbindet Kommunikationswissenschaft, Soziologie und Politikwissenschaft mit daten- und computergestützten Methoden. Info-Sprechstunde: 27. April.
LMU CSS Master
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Mark Lutter @marklutter345.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Concentrated academic recruiting. 10% of political science departments produce 60% of all polsci professors in Germany. FU Berlin produced most professors, followed by Mannheim, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Heidelberg. In psychology,...
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Claudia Wagner @clauwa.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
We opened a new PhD position in our department focusing on CSS research on and with AI agents. Please share the job ad and contact us if you have questions: gesis.jobs.personio.de/job/2594220?...
gesis.jobs.personio.de
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Katrin Weller @kwelle.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
*job* work with my great colleagues at @gesis.org CSS group led by @clauwa.bsky.social and @sebstier.bsky.social
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Sebastian E. Wenz @sewenz.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Puebla et al. (2024). Ten simple rules for recognizing data and software contributions in hiring, promotion, and tenure. PLOS Computational Biology, 20(8), e1012296. doi.org/10.1371/jour...
doi.org
Ten simple rules for recognizing data and software contributions in hiring, promotion, and tenure
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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 13/02/2026
Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."
academic.oup.com
Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky
Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For
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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
If you haven't done yet, please try Claude Coworker just to get an idea about its capabilities. It took 2 minutes for it to read our paper, provide perfectly running R-code to justify a case selection across 14 countries using Vdem. Produced a 10 pager underlining our case selection.
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Karsten Donnay @karstendonnay.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
🚨Job alert 🚨 I have an opening for a postdoc in my team at @ipz.bsky.social in the area of digital democracy starting Sep 1, 2026. If you are working on the impact of the digital transformation on politics, please apply by 🗓️ Mar 1, 2026. 📤 Please share widely! www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/ueber-uns...
ipz.uzh.ch
Offene Stellen / Open Positions
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Lisa Oswald @lfoswaldo.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Big news: I started a new position as Professor for Computational Social Science (W1 tenure track) at the Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S) at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main! www.c3s-frankfurt.de/who-we-are#m...
c3s-frankfurt.de
Who we are - Center for critical computational studies
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 27/01/2026
Super excited to see that somebody finally wrote about this 🥳 If you do research about research, you really need causal thinking (just like when you do research about anything else really).
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European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 26/01/2026
We are opening an investigation into Grok because we believe that X may have breached the DSA. We have seen antisemitic content, non-consensual deepfakes of women, and child sexual abuse material. In Europe, no company will make money by violating our fundamental rights. link.europa.eu/Fh8h84
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Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Ooooh {stringr} now includes a function for my favorite naming convention, snake_case. ☺️
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Philipp Mendoza @philippmendoza.com · 14/01/2026
Cool PhD Position in an amazing project 🚀
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Lukas Rudolph @lukrudolph.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Just out in Nature Communications: "Examining public support for Ukraine’s defense against autocratic aggression". With F. Haggerty and P. Thurner, we show that Western citizens back Ukraine’s fight, but moral and strategic concerns, as well as internal divisions, impose restraints. rdcu.be/eYKAr
doi.org
Client Challenge
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Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)? Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels
Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels.

Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey.

Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away.Text reads:
Question-writing best practices
To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices:

Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions.
Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?”
Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?”Text reads:
Discussion
The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002)
of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.
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Curd Knüpfer @curdknupfer.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
COME WORK WITH US ON DIGITAL SOCIETY & DEMOCRACY IN 🇩🇰! Full Professorship. Fantastic conditions. Highly dynamic team environment. Great colleagues. FUN! Happy to answer questions and make introductions to the rest of the team...
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Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · 15/12/2025
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the release of Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and the advent of the late-2000s electro-pop era, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
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Angelina Wang @angelinawang.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Most LLM evals use API calls or offline inference, testing models in a memory-less silo. Our new Patterns paper shows this misses how LLMs actually behave in real user interfaces, where personalization and interaction history shape responses: arxiv.org/abs/2509.19364
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Sander van der Linden @profsanderlinden.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
New paper out in @science.org! We unveil the online manipulation market with the Cambridge Online Trust & Safety Index (COTSI). We show in real time the cost of purchasing fake accounts across every social platform around the world - so they can be held accountable www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Mapping the online manipulation economy
A market perspective on digital manipulation may help improve online trust and safety
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Lisa Oswald @lfoswaldo.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
It's out!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Big thank you to my coauthors @small-schulz.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, and to all participants who discussed 20 political issues over 4 weeks in 6 subreddit, 3 experimental conditions and let us observe.
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CSS Lab, LMU Munich @css-lmu.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
🚀 We’re hiring a Postdoc! Our group is looking for a Postdoc to join the team working on computational comm research. If you’re excited about automated content analysis, large text & social-media data, open science, this might be for you. 💡 Sounds like you or someone you know? Please share/boost!
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Jan Fuhse @fuhsejan.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
An der Uni Leipzig werden nach meinen Infos in 2026 keine (!) Mittelbau-Stellen verlängert oder neu besetzt. Das hängt natürlich auch an der Landesregierung. Im letzten Newsletter für Mitarbeitende bekam ich eine Einladung zur Diskussion über Perspektiven für Early Career Researchers ...
Einladung zur Fishbowl-Diskussion mit dem Rektorat über die neue Forschungsakademie und "Perspektiven für Early Career Researchers an der Universität Leipzig"
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