Postdoc in Cognitive Science (3 years) Full-time NEW

Postdoc in Cognitive Science (3 years)

Lund University, The Faculties of Humanities and Theology,

Lund University was founded in 1666 and is repeatedly ranked among the world's top universities. The University has around 46,000 students and 8,500 staff based in Lund, Helsingborg and Malmö. We are united in our efforts to understand, explain and improve our world and the human condition.

We Are Looking For A Candidate Who, During Three Years As A Postdoctoral Researcher, Wishes To Contribute To The Research Project Dynamic Cooperation With Emotionally Capable LLMs.

The position is based at Lund University Cognitive Science (LUCS), within the Agentic AI Research Group, and is funded by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS).

The position is a career development post, and its purpose is to act as an initial step on a career path by providing the opportunity to deepen and broaden your research expertise.

The Research Project

This project investigates human-AI collaboration in decision-making from the perspective of dynamic emotional alignment. The overarching aim is to improve collaborative outcomes and the quality of individual human decisions.

As a researcher in this project, you will work on how theories of human affective processing can be implemented and tested in artificial agents. A central question is how systems consisting of one human and one or more artificial agents can communicate through bidirectional emotional signalling. For this to be possible, artificial agents must be able both to express and to model emotions in ways that are meaningfully aligned with human affective processing.

Domains of study may include personal preference-based decisions, such as buying a house; decisions and judgements within legal or other rule-based frameworks where due process is important; and decisions made under cognitive impairment or vulnerability, for example by elderly decision-makers.

This project is part of the Agentic AI Research Group within WASP-HS (see below for a description of WASP-HS). The group focuses specifically on agentic AI: systems capable of increasingly autonomous planning, coordination, and action. It studies such systems not only as a societal and scientific challenge, but also as potential collaborators in research itself. Its work therefore centres on human-AI collaboration, alignment, and the development of new research practices in which autonomous AI systems can contribute to the generation, testing, and evaluation of knowledge.

The postdoctoral researcher will be based at Lund University Cognitive Science and will work in close collaboration with members of the Agentic AI Research Group. Current core members of the group include Christian Balkenius (LUCS), Annika Wallin (LUCS), Petter Johansson (LUCS), Lars Hall (LUCS), Daniel Västfjäll (Linköping University), Philip Pärnamets (Karolinska Institute), Anna Dreber (Stockholm School of Economics).

WASP-HS | Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society is a national research program in Sweden. The vision of WASP-HS is to foster novel interdisciplinary knowledge in the humanities and social sciences about AI and autonomous systems and their impact on human and social development. WASP-HS enables cutting-edge research, expertise, and competence building in the humanities and social sciences.

Tasks And Responsibilities

As a postdoctoral researcher, you will have a central role in developing and carrying out research on emotionally capable LLMs and human-AI cooperation. You will work across all stages of the research process, including theory development, study design, data collection, statistical analysis, interpretation, and publication. You will design and run experiments on human interaction with artificial agents, contribute to modelling affective processes in AI systems, and investigate how emotional signalling can improve trust, cooperation, and decision quality in human-AI teams.

You will also help connect the project to current developments in agentic AI. This means that you are expected to stay up to date with research on LLM-based agents, prompting methods, fine-tuning strategies, and multi-agent systems, and to assess how such methods can be incorporated into the project's empirical and theoretical work. The position is therefore particularly well suited to a candidate who wants to combine strong experimental research skills with active engagement in emerging AI methods.

The position is a career development post, and its purpose is to act as an initial step on a career path by providing the opportunity to deepen and broaden your research expertise. The position also includes some pedagogical training. Teaching, supervision and other teaching-related duties may also be included in the duties, but up to a maximum of one-fifth of the working time.

What We Offer

As a postdoctoral researcher, you will have the opportunity to develop your independence as a researcher with the support of senior colleagues. The appointment is limited to 3 years and is full time in accordance with the Agreement regarding fixed-term employment as a postdoctoral fellow. International employees are supported in their move to Sweden. If you have a family, they will find new contacts and support through Lund's International Citizen Hub.

Lund University is a government agency, which means that you get special benefits, generous holidays and a favourable occupational pension. Find out more on the University website about working with us Work for us | Lund University

Ready to shape the future of research? Find more reasons why Lund University and the HT Faculties is right for you here, and learn more about Working in Lund, Moving to Lund and Living in Lund.

Qualifications

The assessment will primarily be based on your research merits and your potential as a researcher. Particular emphasis will be placed on research competence within the subject area.

Required Qualifications

• Doctoral degree or equivalent international degree in Cognitive Science, Psychology, Affective Neuroscience, Human–Computer Interaction, or a closely related field. This requirement must be fulfilled no later than the date on which the employment decision is made, and as an applicant, you are responsible for supplementing your application with documentation that confirms the completed doctoral degree.
• Good ability to develop and carry out high-quality research.
• Teaching skills.
• You have not previously been employed as a postdoc researcher under the existing agreement on fixed-term postdoc employment for more than one year in the same or a related subject area with Lund University.
• High proficiency in English.
• Solid understanding of core theories in affective science and social cognition (e.g., appraisal theories, basic vs. complex emotions, cognitive vs. affective empathy, shared intentionality, emotion regulation).
• Demonstrated interest in, or prior work on, the emotional capabilities of LLMs or other AI systems.
• Programming skills in Python sufficient for experimental work and data analysis.

Desired Qualifications

• A doctoral degree completed no more than three years prior to the application deadline. If there are special circumstances such as leave of absence because of illness, parental leave, position as elected representative in trade union organisations, military service or service/assignments relevant to the subject area, this time can be deducted from the time elapsed since the doctoral degree was completed.
• Experience building or fine-tuning LLMs, for example through prompt engineering, LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation), RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), or full fine-tuning.
• Familiarity with affective-computing frameworks or biologically inspired emotion models.
• Prior work using multi-agent LLM simulations of social behaviour or social dilemmas.
• Knowledge of reinforcement learning applied to language agents or emotional decision-making.
• Competence in advanced prompting techniques (Chain-of-Thought, Tree-of-Thought, self-consistency, emotion-conditioned generation and related techniques).
• Track record of interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive science/psychology and AI/ML teams.

Terms

The appointment is limited to 3 years and is full time in accordance with the Agreement regarding fixed-term employment as a postdoctoral fellow.

How To Apply

Your application should be written in English and is to include: a research plan, a CV, copy of your doctoral degree certificate, list of publications, and up to five publications. Your research plan should relate to the theme and research project described above.

You can find instructions on how to compile an application here: How to apply for a postdoc position at the Joint Faculties of Humanity and Theology | The joint faculties of humanities and theology.

Only applicants whose research and previous work could strengthen the research team and the project as a whole will be considered for the position.

About The Joint Faculties of the Humanities and Theology The Joint Faculties of the Humanities and Theology have seven departments and carries out large and varied work within research and education with the purpose to understand people as