Postdoctoral Fellow

Overview

The Department of Sociology and Social Policy at Lingnan University in Hong Kong is recruiting two Postdoctoral Fellows for a research programme on the COVID-19 pandemic. Lingnan is one of the eight publicly funded higher education institutions in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and has the longest established tradition among them. The department has received the university's Research Excellence Award and Teaching Excellence Awards and hosts master's programmes in comparative social policy and in sociology and data analytics.

The programme investigates which public health and social control measures reduced COVID-19 transmission the most while causing the least disruption to communities, and evaluates the best social policy designs for limiting the economic harm of the pandemic. It combines cross-national research with a local survey and focus groups in Hong Kong. The fellows' main duties are scholarly research, although they may also help with course teaching, supervise student research projects and take on other assigned duties. They are expected to commit to academic excellence and to pursue their own high-quality research and journal publications.

Requirements

Applicants should have obtained or been conferred a PhD in sociology, social policy or a related discipline no more than three years before the appointment starts, with evidence of excellent research outputs. Experience conducting state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative social research is essential. Experience with systematic literature reviews, comparative social policy analysis, large-scale longitudinal data sets, set-theoretic methods or computational social science is a distinct advantage.

What you get

The posts are normally fixed-term contracts of up to two years, with remuneration matched to qualifications and experience. Benefits include annual leave, medical and dental benefits, a mandatory provident fund, gratuity, and incoming passage and baggage allowance for eligible appointees.

How to apply

Applications are made online, with names and contact details of at least three referees who have agreed to provide references. Further information about the programme can be obtained from Professor Stefan Kuhner.

Key dates

The closing date is 15 November 2026.