Drs. Sara Levens and Erika Montanaro are actively seeking applicants for the Multicultural Postdoctoral Fellowship program at UNC Charlotte (UNCC). This postdoctoral position is for 2 years of full-time research, starting August 1, 2020. Fellows in the program are provided with a competitive annual salary plus a small research/travel fund, as well as an office, computer, health benefits, a formal mentoring plan, and participation in professional development brown bags and workshops.
UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s only urban research institution. It leverages its location in the state’s largest city to offer internationally competitive programs of research and creative activity, exemplary undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, and a focused set of community engagement initiatives.
In addition to interdisciplinary research opportunities across departments within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Computing and Informatics, the College of Health and Human Services, and the Belk College of Business, post doctoral fellows will also have access to UNC Charlotte’s Data Science Initiative (DSI) resources, which combines aspects of computer science, modeling, applied mathematics and statistics to benefit health and business research and industry. Included in the DSI is access to the Twitter firehose through GNIP, which allows customized and archival searches of Twitter data, as well as access to SOPHI (System for Observation of Populous and Heterogeneous Information), which supports best practices for big data management.
For application requirements, visit https://diversitypostdoc.uncc.edu/application-materials. As an EOE/AA employer and an ADVANCE Institution that strives to create an academic climate in which the dignity of all individuals is respected and maintained, UNC Charlotte encourages applications from all underrepresented groups. The deadline to apply is November 1, 2019
Successful applicants will need a letter of support from research active UNC Charlotte faculty indicating that they will serve as your primary mentor at UNC Charlotte. Drs. Sara Levens and Erika Montanaro are actively seeking applicants for this program and will provide a letter of support if research interests align with qualified applicants.
Drs. Levens and Montanaro seek to build an interdisciplinary team that explores how individuals communicate about and participate in health behaviors online. The Post doc will have the opportunity to be involved in multiple projects. Potential projects ready for a postdoctoral fellow to contribute to and expand upon include:
- Dr. Montanaro’s ‘Social Media Use, Health, and Risk Behavior Among Young Women’ study which examines how young ethnic minority women communicate about and even participate in risk behavior (e.g., substance use, sexual activity) via the Internet.
- Dr. Montanaro’s ‘Technology and Relationships Among Young Adults’ study which examines how young couples communicate about and even participate in risk behavior (e.g., substance use, sexual activity) via text messages.
- Dr. Levens’s ‘Emotion Contagion on Social Media’ study which explores characteristics that propagate emotional content through social media, the signaling emotion regulation strategy, the time course of emotion diffusion, and how emotion in social media catalyzes social and political movements. This interdisciplinary project with collaborators in Computer Science and Communication is funded by the Department of Defense (Award 72487-RT-REP; Lead PI: Dr. Levens).
- Dr. Levens and Dr. Montanaro’s planned research on HPV vaccine uptake and provider communication. In collaboration with other Psychology Department faculty this multifaceted project will explore the intersectionality of gender, race, SES and developmental stage on provider practices with regard to HPV. In addition, health information social media studies will be conducted to test and identify successful pro-vaccination and anti-vaccination HPV campaigns on social media.
For more detail about current project, please visit Dr. Montanaro’s (https://pages.charlotte.edu/emontana/) and/or Dr. Levens’s (https://levenslab.uncc.edu/) websites.
Desired Skills
- Expertise working with diverse population (including, but not limited to racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and underserved populations)
- Interdisciplinary research experience
- Proficient in R, Python, and/or statistical analysis methods
- Expertise in health, risk behavior, online/social media communication
- Competency in analysis of text and social media data
Interested applicants should contact one or both of us at emontana@uncc.edu or slevens@uncc.edu before November 1st.
