Student assistant (m/f/d) in Computer Science or related field

The Weizenbaum Institute, founded in 2017, researches the effects of advancing digitalization on our society. With its recommendations for action, it contributes to ensuring that the digital transformation is sustainable, self-determined and responsible. The Weizenbaum Institute is supported by a network of seven partners, including the Free University of Berlin, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Technical University of Berlin, the Berlin University of the Arts, the University of Potsdam, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) and the Berlin Science Center for Social Research (WZB). The institute is financed by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the state of Berlin. It is located in Berlin.

For our research group "Digitalization and Opening up Science" at the Weizenbaum-Institut e.V. we are looking as of 01^st May 2026 for student assistant (m/f/d) in Computer Science or related field with 25,64 percent of regular working hours (10 hours per week). The position is initially limited until 28 February 2027.

Work Content

The position is embedded in the one-year Short Project "GrokiWiki - Polarizing knowledge? A computational comparison of political leaning and referencing practices in the online encyclopedias Wikipedia and Grokipedia." GrokiWiki is an interdisciplinary collaborative project between the research group "Dynamics of Digital Mobilization" (led by Dr. Daniel Thiele, Political Science), which studies digital information infrastructures and mobilizations in networked public spheres, and the research group "Digitalization and Opening of Science" (led by Angelie Kraft, Computer Science), which researches and designs data infrastructures and data tools for interdisciplinary researchers, particularly scientific practices around the development and deployment of artificial intelligence.

The project pursues a comparative analysis of Grokipedia and Wikipedia, focusing on content overlaps and political orientation based on the representation of political actors. The interdisciplinary approach combines concepts and methods from political science and computer science.

Your Tasks

Support for the research groups in planning and conducting the above mentioned research project, particularly:

• Programming tasks (especially Python, possibly R)
• Preparation and execution of (computer-assisted) data collection and annotation
• Preprocessing and cleaning of weakly structured data (text corpora)
• Application, optimization, and evaluation of language models for automated text classification (especially Named Entity Recognition; Entity Linking; Targeted Sentiment Analysis; Regard Classification)
• Literature research and documentation

Your Profile

• Active Master's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Computational Social Science, or a related field (e.g., social sciences with demonstrable skills in computational methods)
• Good or very good academic performance
• Very good knowledge and relevant practical experience in Python programming (possibly R)
• Excellent English and German language skills and very good communication abilities
• Interest in interdisciplinary research and political questions
• Enjoyment of teamwork
• Motivated, independent, and structured working style

Your Chance

• flexible working hours and the option of mobile working (in consultation with team lead)
• remuneration analogue to TV Stud III
• insight into current research and everyday scientific work
• close cooperation with the scientific staff
• inspiring academic and international working environment in the heart of Berlin (near Bahnhof Zoo) with broad, interdisciplinary networks in research, media and politics

Further Information

Severely disabled applicants with equal qualifications will be given preference. We value diversity and welcome all applications, regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic or social origin, religion, disability, age, or sexual orientation. The Weizenbaum Institute expressly encourages women* and people with a migration background to apply.

You can submit your application, consisting of a letter of motivation, CV, your current proof of matriculation and your academic certificates and grades, in our application portal by 31 March 2026. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Maite Vöhl from our HR team (personal[at]weizenbaum-institut.de) at any time. We look forward to receiving your documents.

Application portal