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Hiring Postdoctoral Researcher: PEPR TRANSFORM — Aesthetic of Transformation

The médialab is looking for a postdoctoral researcher as part of the targeted action “Aesthetic of Transformation — Sciences, Arts & Society” within PEPR TRANSFORM.

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Deadline:

Job description

The postdoctoral researcher will play a central role in Targeted Action 3, working with the principal investigator and two designers to develop fieldwork devices for inquiry. The role involves investigating and co-designing situated formats that enable learning with others in the field, rather than merely observing or representing them from the outside. 

The successful candidate will help turn fieldwork into an equipped and collaborative mode of inquiry. These devices may take the form of visual protocols, drawing techniques, workshop settings, digital infrastructures, performative situations, or public formats. They will create the conditions for researchers, artists, citizens, and field actors to describe together the transformations they experience, sustain, or contest.

Working closely with the designers, the postdoctoral researcher will help make perceptible the gestures, attachments, hesitations, and ways of doing that often remain invisible in standard research protocols. The aim is to support an experimental ethnographic approach in which field actors are treated as epistemic partners. 

The successful candidate will also contribute to the New Assemblies axis of Targeted Action 3. This work will help make the Institut Transform’s third place an experimental space for reflection, creation, and public inquiry. The postdoctoral researcher will develop formats through which researchers, artists, citizens, and field actors can gather around emerging ecological sensibilities, share situated concerns, and test collective ways of describing environmental issues.

A central part of the role will involve preparing the public assembly for Targeted Action 3. This assembly will combine performances, installations, and discussions as a moment of restitution and experimentation. It will also serve as a prototype for future artistic interventions in research and contribute to co-writing a strategic document that defines new evaluation criteria for artistic research practices.

Research and conceptual contribution

The postdoctoral researcher will develop the conceptual and methodological framework for Targeted Action 3, with particular attention to aesthetic transformation and the relations among science, the arts, and society. They will define the research methodology, plan the empirical fieldwork, and maintain the coherence of Targeted Action 3 within TRANSFORM. 

This work will connect Targeted Action 3 with the scientific practices and pedagogical innovations developed by the other Targeted Actions, while contributing to the objectives of the Institut Transform.

Fieldwork and experimental situations

Building on ongoing research at the Laboratoires Terrestres, the postdoctoral researcher will, under the principal investigator's supervision, identify the fieldwork sites most relevant to Targeted Action 3. They will investigate how experimental situations generate gestures of transformation, and how different actors invent, sustain, or care for them beyond the scientific community alone. 

The fieldwork will document the practices, attachments, obligations, and situated forms of knowledge through which transformation becomes perceptible and actionable.

Design and documentation of fieldwork formats

Under the principal investigator’s supervision and in collaboration with the designers, the postdoctoral researcher will help design fieldwork devices that collect, describe, and render sensible gestures of transformation across social sciences, design, and artistic practices. 

These devices will act as “sensors”: they will produce traces of gestures that ordinary observation, textual description, or conventional academic formats often miss. Through visual, spatial, performative, narrative, audiovisual, or documentary materials, the researcher will help produce multimodal accounts of transformative gestures and of the activities developed within the Laboratoires Terrestres.

Project coordination, publication, and dissemination

The postdoctoral researcher will coordinate Targeted Action 3 activities with the principal investigator, the designers, and the wider TRANSFORM team. They will help organise the artist–researcher residency cycle on transformative epistemic practices and support the production of experimental formats such as performances, exhibitions, visualisations, and installations. 

They will also develop the New Assemblies axis by shaping the TRANSFORM third place into a space where researchers, artists, citizens, and field actors gather around emerging ecological sensibilities.

The postdoctoral researcher will also:

  • Monitor relevant literature in environmental humanities, science and technology studies, research-creation, arts–sciences relations, transformative research, and socio-environmental change;
  • Support the activities of Targeted Action 3, including residencies, visiting fellows, interdisciplinary workshops, public assemblies, and exchanges with the Laboratoires Terrestres;
  • Contribute to the development of the Sciences Po médialab and TRANSFORM's national and international research networks.

Profile

Prospective candidates should demonstrate:

Expertise in environmental humanities, STS, or experimental anthropology
Strong theoretical and empirical knowledge of socio-environmental transformations, situated knowledge, public problems, collective inquiry, and the relations between science, society, and ecological transformation. 

Knowledge of arts–sciences relations and research-creation
A strong interest in engaging artistic, design, curatorial, performative, or multimodal practices as modes of inquiry, not only as tools for communication or dissemination. Experience with research-creation, experimental collaboration, multimodal methods, or artistic research will count as an asset.

Experience in empirical fieldwork
Experience defining, conducting, documenting, and analysing fieldwork in complex multi-actor situations. Particular attention should be paid to situated practices, local attachments, forms of care, and the gestures through which transformation takes shape. 

Capacity for theoretical and methodological synthesis
The candidate should connect empirical materials with conceptual frameworks, produce rigorous analyses, and contribute to the coherence of Targeted Action 3 within TRANSFORM.

Experience in interdisciplinary collaboration and project coordination
Experience in interdisciplinary collaboration is essential. The successful candidate should be comfortable working with designers, artists, local actors, institutions, and non-academic partners. They should contribute to workshops, residencies, public events, and collective research formats.

Fluency in French and English
Excellent written and spoken French and English are required, as the project involves collaboration with researchers, artists, local actors, and institutions in national and international contexts. 

We expect applications from candidates in environmental humanities, science and technology studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, design research, arts-based research, or related fields. We also welcome other disciplinary profiles able to meet the criteria listed above and contribute to the experimental, empirical, and theoretical ambitions of Targeted Action 3.

The project will provide scientific, methodological, personal, and material support in line with the candidate’s knowledge, skills, and research trajectory. The postdoctoral researcher will develop an original scientific profile at the intersection of transformative research, environmental humanities, arts–sciences relations, and experimental forms of inquiry.

Working conditions 

The candidate will work at Sciences Po’s médialab in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, as part of a team of researchers, engineers, and designers.

The position starts on December 1, 2026, as an 80% full-time equivalent contract. By that date, the candidate must have submitted their PhD dissertation.

Sciences Po offers a salary of €3,100 per month. The position includes full health cover, paid holidays, working-time reduction days, 50% coverage of public transport, and lunch vouchers.

The position offers the candidate the opportunity to develop an original research profile in a highly interdisciplinary context, at the intersection of environmental humanities, science and technology studies, design research, and arts–sciences relations. The candidate will contribute to the creation of the Institut Transform and to the experimental development of Targeted Action 3, while working with a national and international network of researchers, artists, designers, institutions, and territorial actors.

Application procedure

Applicants should send their applications before 16/09/2026 to recrutement.medialab@sciencespo.fr and donato.ricci@sciencespo.fr, specifying “Postdoctoral Researcher — PEPR TRANSFORM / Aesthetic of Transformation” in the email subject line.

Applications must include:

  • A CV;
  • A 2-page narrative résumé describing, in relation to the scope of Targeted Action 3, the candidate’s expected contributions to the generation of new tools, methodologies, or knowledge;
  • A PhD certificate or proof that the PhD dissertation has been submitted;
  • Two relevant texts, such as articles, dissertation chapters, reports, or other research outputs;
  • A letter of recommendation.

The call will remain open online until the team finds a suitable candidate. We take the careful selection of new team members seriously, and the team may organise several selection interviews as part of the process.

For questions about the position’s content, please contact Donato Ricci at donato.ricci@sciencespo.fr.