Post-Doctoral Fellow

Position description

The Better Government Lab conducts empirical field-based research to assess the impact and effectiveness of interventions and policies aimed at improving the capacity of government and the quality of government, and is part of the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

The Postdoctoral Fellow will be part of the project "Can governments learn digital governance innovation from the civic tech community?" working closely with project's PI's (Pamela Herd, Sebastian Jilke, Donald Moynihan).The position is for two years, and funded via an award from the Tech and Public Policy program and McCourt Institute. We hope to have someone in place for Fall of 2023, but will search until a suitable candidate is found. 
We seek candidates with strong mixed-methods or qualitative method skills. The primary responsibility will be to engage in a study of how civic technology organizations interact with government, and how those interactions facilitate the adoption of digital innovation in government. This will require conducting a series of primary case studies using mixed-methods.

The position will not require any teaching and has flexibility for geographical location in accordance with Georgetown's telework policy. 

The Postdoctoral Fellow will: 

• Help to develop a research plan;
• Complete Georgetown IRB training and requirements for the project;
• Organize and undertake interviews with research subjects;
• Perform data analysis and interpretation;
• Distill findings into reports, policy memos and academic publications;
• Present project designs and results at government and external conferences and meetings;
• Support other Better Government Lab studies of civic technology innovations.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in and research experience with public policy, political science, economics, public administration, organization theory, sociology, business, or a related field (ABDs are welcome to apply if they expect to complete or be near completion of their Ph.D. before project start).

The ideal candidate will have a mix of the following qualifications: 

• Extensive knowledge of and experience applying qualitative skills, with quantitative skills as a bonus;
• An interest in government capacity, administrative burden, digital innovations, human-centered design, organizational theory and/or social policy;
• Experience or strong interest in working with government programs, policies and/or operations;
• Strong project management skills;

Application instructions

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