The research project Level up your money game hosted at The Center for Tracking and Society at The Department of Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invites applications for a full time PhD Scholarship for a duration of 3 years to be filled by 1 February 2025, or as soon as possible thereafter.
The chosen candidate will be employed and enrolled at the Faculty of Humanities under the PhD School at the Faculty of Humanities.
Job content
The PhD position is part of the Level up your money game project which runs from 2025 to 2027 and is funded by the Velux foundation. The successful candidate’s research activities will contribute to the project’s empirical studies of children and young people’s economic socialisation at the intersection between gaming and finance.
Level up your money game addresses children and young peoples ‘money games’ in online environments. With money games we refer to the ongoing convergence between gaming and finance as virtual game economies intersect with wider speculative trading on the internet, new types of ‘finfluencers’ emerge on social media platforms, gaming discourses spread across the financial sector, and gamification techniques are put to use on retail investment platforms. The project addresses children and young people’s money games in this digital environment at the level of social practices, creator strategies and platform models. To do this, the project will combine qualitative fieldwork, digital methods and political economic analysis.
For more information about the project, please contact the project PI Anne Mette Thorhauge (thorhaug@hum.ku.dk).
As a PhD student in the project, you are expected to formulate and carry out your own PhD project focused on an empirical mapping and exploration of everyday practices, identities, and socialization of Danish youth at the intersection between gaming and finance, in accordance with work package 1 in the project. This work will include qualitative fieldwork, primarily consisting of ethnographic interviews and focus groups with Danish youth, and qualitative, and possibly quantitative, analyses of social media content and social interactions across relevant sites and platforms. This work will be linked with the overall project work on social practices and platform models and contribute to a more general conceptualization and analysis of money games as a multidimensional construct.
In addition to carrying out an individual PhD project the successful applicant is expected to participate in project activities, including regular coordination activities as well as organizing, hosting and/or attending research events in Denmark and abroad. As a PhD student at the Department of Communication you will be part of a dynamic and internationally oriented interdisciplinary environment focused on advancing theoretical, methodological and empirical research about digital society.
Qualification requirements and assessment criteria
Applicants must have a two-year master’s degree (120 ECTS) or equivalent within a relevant field and, as minimum, have submitted a master’s thesis for which they have received pre-approval at the time of application. Applicants must have theoretical and empirical qualifications within the broad field of digital media and communications research. Applicants experienced with qualitative field work such as individual interviews and focus groups with children and young people will be prioritized.
The qualifications of applicants with non-Danish master’s degrees will be assessed to decide whether they correspond to the Danish level. For further information, please refer to the website of the Ministry of Education and Research:
General assessments for specific countries — English (ufm.dk)
Applicants must possess skills in written and spoken academic English at a high level. Applicants must also possess sufficient skills in written and spoken Danish to conduct the specified field work. If deemed necessary, the Department may request that applicants document their language skills.
How to apply
To be awarded a PhD scholarship the applicant must enrol as a PhD student at the Faculty of Humanities, cf. the rules of the Danish Ministerial order No 1039 of 27 August 2013.
Applications must be submitted online. Click on the “Apply now” icon at the bottom of this advertisement to apply. The application must be written in English, and include the following enclosures in Adobe PDF or Word format:
- Project abstract (Please fill in the “Project abstract” box in the application form. Must not exceed 1,200 keystrokes)
- Cover letter detailing your motivation and background for applying for the specific PhD project
- PhD project description aligned with the goals of the overall research project and work package 1 (maximum 12,000 keystrokes not including bibliography). Project outline of Level up your money game is available on request from its PI, Associate Professor Anne Mette Thorhauge, email: thorhaug@hum.ku.dk.
- CV (2 page maximum)
- Diploma and transcripts of records (BA/BSc and master’s degree)
- Time schedule
- Budget
- Other information for consideration, e.g. list of publications, documentation of English and language qualifications (if relevant)