Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Columbia World Projects: The Columbia Center for Political Economy

About Columbia World Projects

Columbia World Projects mobilizes the university’s researchers and scholars to work with governments, organizations, businesses and communities to tackle global challenges. Columbia World Projects is a major, university-wide initiative that aims to forge a closer and more useful connection between Columbia University's vast research capabilities and the needs of the world. 

Columbia World Projects is part of Columbia Global, which brings together major global initiatives from across the university to advance knowledge and foster global engagement. In addition to World Projects, those initiatives include the Columbia Global Centers, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.  

Columbia Global’s mission is to address complex global challenges through groundbreaking scholarly pursuits, leadership development, cutting-edge research, and projects that aim for social impact. 

About the Columbia Center for Political Economy 

Launched in 2022, the Center for Political Economy at Columbia World Projects identifies and advances the most promising contemporary developments within economics and promotes a new political economy with robust, intellectual and policy incubators across distinct thematic areas, or ‘Idea Labs’, outlined below.

Position Summary 

The Columbia Center for Political Economy is seeking full-time Postdoctoral Research Scholars beginning July 1, 2025. Under the direction of the Center’s faculty Co-directors and Idea Lab leads, the Scholar will have the opportunity to pursue their own research while supporting the work of the Center. 

The Center invites applications on topics of relevance to the Center’s broad priorities. This includes the foci of the Center’s Idea Labs – Work and Labor, Firms and Industrial Policy, Money and Finance, and Political Economy of Climate. We encourage you to apply for the Idea Lab that best suits your background and research interests. Please see below for descriptions of each Lab.

• Work and Labor examines the forces that influence labor and labor markets, focusing on modes of collective worker action, the interplay between government policies and worker power, how worker organizations intersect with the political process and government, and the future of domestic and international labor movements, with an emphasis on empirical research. This cycle the Work and Labor Idea Lab is especially interested in applicants whose work speaks to politics and policy, including, but not limited to, the politics of enacting labor reform at different levels of government; worker perspectives on representation through labor organizations and collective action; the design of labor policies and the effects of those policies on opportunities for building worker power and fostering collective action; coalition management between worker organizations and other movements and organized interests; and the relationship between worker organizations, including unions, and politics and government. 
• Firms and Industrial Policy aims to gain new insights into how firms behave, to provide a grounding for policy interventions to promote innovation and shared prosperity. Industrial policy – government interventions to stimulate innovation, accelerate technological change, and promote selected industries – is back on mainstream policy agendas in the U.S., Europe, and many developing countries. But even as the policy pendulum swings back toward government intervention, the knowledge base to guide industrial policy remains underdeveloped. Topics may focus on factors that shape firms' decisions technology adoption, product innovation, quality upgrading, R&D investments, patenting, and other forms of innovative behavior; on how such decisions are influenced by market conditions, network relationships, and supply chain architectures; on novel ways to measure such decisions and influences; and on what works and doesn't work in industrial policy.
• Money and Finance explores the relation of money and finance both in theoretical terms and in institutional configurations, including the design of financial instruments as well as the policy instruments employed by central banks, but also the design of financial intermediaries and their relation to central banks and financial market regulators. The deeply imbricated institutional relation of money and finance has important implications for political economy. Topics may include the future of central banking, the rise of digital money systems, the role of money and finance in climate change as accelerator or mitigator, the impact of large asset managers on financial systems, as well as the search for alternative forms for financing R&D, land preservation, and social protection.
• Political Economy of Climate explores how political and economic forces shape policy and societal responses to climate change. The Lab is most interested in fostering synergies around the following thematic areas: climate fairness and environmental justice, international collaboration or lack thereof, interests shaping the effectiveness of energy transition, and political constraints on environmental (especially climate) policies. The Lab is currently focused on the political economy of forests and how communities dependent on fossil fuel extraction adjust to shifts in demand.

Funding for the Postdoctoral Research Scholar will cover salary for up to one year with the possibility of a one-year extension. The scholar will commit to jointly organize seminars and conferences, public events, and additional programmatic support and outreach with the given Lab that they are involved with.

Qualifications

Applicants must have a PhD, JSD, or equivalent from across the social sciences, history, and law.

Application

Interested applicants should submit the following materials via Submittable:

1. Cover Letter describing your interest and relevant experience;
2. Curriculum Vitae;
3. Documentation of PhD or JSD conferment, or timeline for obtaining degree;
4. Writing sample consisting of a single journal article, essay, or book chapter (published or unpublished);
5. A summary of the research plan for which the position is sought (limited to 350 words);
6. A detailed research plan (up to five pages, single-spaced) for the position stating specific goals to be accomplished during the period it will be held; and
7. Three letters of recommendation provided by references familiar with your work (including your doctoral supervisor, if applicable).

Please use this Submittable application link to submit an application. Only complete applications submitted via the process outlined will be considered. 

Key Deadlines:

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. All application materials must be received no later than December 2, 2024 at 5:00PM EST. 

Decisions are expected to be made in February 2025, with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2025.

Please contact politicaleconomy@columbia.edu with any questions.