Project description:
This position is part of the ERC-funded project Ethics in Action: Navigating Ethical Dilemmas of Migrant Solidarity, led by Professor Julia Mourão Permoser.

Focusing on policies and practices of solidarity with irregular and precarious migrants, Ethics in Action develops a novel, actor-centred framework to understand how policymakers and civil society actors navigate ethical dilemmas in real-world contexts. Rather than treating ethics as abstract theory, the project investigates ethics in action—that is, the everyday processes of decision-making, justification, and compromise through which political actors respond to morally conflicting situations.

The project brings together political theory and empirical research in an innovative way. Through in-depth qualitative fieldwork across multiple world regions, it examines how five different types of actors—national policymakers, local policymakers, labour unions, faith-based organizations and facilitators of movement—experience, interpret, and respond to ethical dilemmas in practice. These cases are systematically compared across Global North and Global South contexts to identify patterns and develop a new theory of decision-making under conditions of value conflict.
By focusing on political agency under constraint, Ethics in Action opens up a new research agenda that goes beyond existing approaches to polarization and value conflict. It shows how actors continue to act—even under conditions of deep moral tension—and how their decisions reshape their political identities and the meaning of solidarity itself.

The project team includes the PI, a coordinating postdoctoral researcher, and five researchers (postdoctoral fellows and PhD candidates), each leading a complementary empirical work package. Together, the team will generate comparative insights that feed into a shared theoretical framework.


Your Role in the Project

You will lead Work Package 3 conducting a comparative study of the ethical dilemmas faced by local policymakers in sanctuary/solidarity cities in the United States and Latin America.
This is a unique opportunity to:

• Design and carry out your own comparative research within a major ERC project
  
• Conduct fieldwork in diverse and politically relevant urban contexts
  
• Contribute to theory-building at the intersection of empirical research and political theory
  
• Collaborate within an ambitious, international, and interdisciplinary research team
  

Your tasks:

• Lead Work Package 3 of the ERC Project
  
• Select cities to investigate as case studies within the project’s comparative framework
  
• Conduct qualitative fieldwork (e.g. interviews, participant observation, policy analysis)
  
• Publish high-quality research in leading international journals
  
• Contribute to collaborative outputs, including an edited volume and a practitioner-oriented handbook
  
• Engage with academic and non-academic stakeholders in the fieldwork regions
  
• Mentor junior researchers and contribute to a dynamic team environment
  Participate in conferences, workshops, and public engagement activities
  
• Contribute and engage in other departmental affairs and activities
  

We look forward to receiving your online application by 24 August 2026.

The University for Continuing Education Krems sees high innovation potential in the diversity of its employees and is committed to diversity as a guiding principle. We therefore explicitly invite people with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses who meet the required profile criteria to apply for the position.

Your application should include:

• Cover letter (max. 2 pages)
  
• Curriculum Vitae
  
• Research outline (2–3 pages) describing how you would design and implement Work Package 3
  
• Copies of degrees and transcripts
  
• Two writing samples (preferably single-authored academic articles or chapters)
  
• 3 contact details for references
  

The research outline should address:

1. The ethical dilemmas likely to arise in the context of sanctuary/solidarity cities in the United States and Latin America
   
2. The proposed research design and methodology
   
3. Relevant theoretical and empirical literature, including additional sources beyond the project proposal
   

For further details, please consult the project proposal.