Justice vacancies
PhD Position: The Rise of Technocourts and Governing the Appification of Justice
University of Amsterdam
If we imagine courts we imagine buildings, places of legal expertise and authority. With the arrival of the internet and digitisation, however, our ideas of courts and their role in society has started to change. Technology companies are a driving force behind the development of a whole range of new justice-as-a-service offers that are re-defining and re-inventing the administration of justice in the algorithmic society. In addition, we see a push from platform companies to create new kinds of authority of adjucation, freed from jurisdictional constraints, national legislation and slow-working national court systems (for example the Facebook Oversight Board). The goal of this project is to describe and critically analyse the rise of new forms of techno-courts and the appification of justice, to explore, what, if any, are the existing procedures and arrangements for negotiating value conflicts and upholding judicial values, to examine how the shift to technocourts affects citizens’ ideas of, and expectations towards courts as instances of adjucation, and the role of legal expertise and which government frameworks (should) apply.
Profile of the candidate
The candidate for this position has a (research) master degree in information law or political science. The candidate has a strong affinity with the above topics and in working together with a team of people from different disciplines including an interest to learn and work with researchers from communication science, political science, STS, digital humanities and communication science.
Furthermore you have:
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Proven academic interest in questions regarding algorithmic applications and digital society;
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Interest in working in a very interdisciplinary, cross-university environment;
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Interest in contributing to and helping to create the broader algosoc research community;
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An excellent written and spoken command of English (written and spoken command of other languages, including Dutch, French, and/or German is a plus);
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Affinity with organising workshops, lecture series, and similar events.
If the vacancy appeals to you, but you are doubting whether you might be THE person we are looking for, please do apply. We encourage all qualified applicants, including minorities, women, people with disabilities, and members of other groups underrepresented in academia to apply. We wish to create a consortium that consists of persons who each contribute in their unique way to the team. Complementarity and not homogeneity is what we are looking for.
Developing a societal vision on automated decision making concerns us all. We believe that a diversity of perspectives in our consortium will be important in developing an inclusive societal vision and strive therefore also in our hiring policy for encouraging applicants from diverse backgrounds. We are committed to creating an environment of mutual respect, inclusiveness, equal opportunities with room for situated experiences, diverse perspectives, and ideas to flourish. This commitment applies to our research, organisation, room for flexibility, training, and community activities as well as our hiring strategy.