PhD scholarship at The Center for Information and Bubble Studies

Copenhagen University
Copenhagen - Denmark
S: DKK 24,137

One PhD scholarship at The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS).

The Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, invites applications for one 3-year PhD scholarships. The successful candidate will be appointed to the newly established Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) sponsored by the Carlsberg Foundation, where the project will be based, and will be expected to begin on December 1, 2015 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Description of the project
"Bubbles" are usually considered unwelcome and destabilizing phenomena associated with finance and real estate markets. Generally a bubble has developed when assets trade at prices far exceeding the estimated fundamental value. The guiding research principle of The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) is that bubbles essentially amount to information control problems among deliberating agents who are collectively susceptible to robustly demonstrated socio-psychological features like boom-thinking, group-thinking and lemming effects, which together with determinate market models and conditions may make for bubble-hospitable environments.

CIBS studies bubble phenomena across different ontologies by
1.focusing on the socio-psychological phenomena among agents leading to often irrational group behavior facilitated by imperfect or wrongful information processing among group members influenced by social proof,
2.being inspired by the main strands of bubble models in economics accordingly study concepts like "social capital”, "opinion”, "fame”, "recognition”, "scientific progress" apparent in other "markets" (agent interactive settings) with particular emphasis on the information-driven dynamics and thus study bubble formation, bursts and deflation across traditional domains and disciplines,
3.uncovering the formal structure and dynamics, provide simulation and experimental results, offer resolutions of, and recommendations for avoiding (or stimulating benign) bubbles or boom behavior of agents reasoning and processing information in concert.

The advertised PhD scholarship will be part of uncovering the formal structure and dynamics of bubble phenomena across sectors, domains and institutions. We are looking for a candidate with a background in economics, preferably with some emphasis on the mathematics of bubble formation, herd behavior and investment, epistemic game theory, interactive epistemology or some adequate combination hereof.

The successful candidate will be working in close cooperation with computer scientists, logicians and philosophers, social psychologists and behavioral scientists in order to crack the code of these interdisciplinary objects of scientific inquiry, which bubbles are within the CIBS understanding.
It is expected that the successful candidate will be present, part of the team and partake in the activities of CIBS on a daily basis. Furthermore, the successful candidate will be enrolled in the PhD School at the Faculty of Humanities, but it will be expected that the candidate will participate in PhD courses at both the Faculty of Humanities, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. The PhD programme will therefore be interdisciplinary with an affiliation with Faculty of Humanities, and the Faculty of Social Sciences.
For further information, please contact Director of CIBS, Professor Vincent F. Hendricks, vincent@hum.ku.dk.

Application deadline: October 6th, 2015 at 23.59 (CET).

To see the full version of the call and information on how to apply, please visit the PhD School's website: http://phd.humanities.ku.dk/how_to_apply/calls/.

Job summary