MICROCODE: Exploring the Role of Public Opinion in Military Alliances

This groundbreaking project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) uncovers how public opinion drives the stability of military alliances such as NATO. Using advanced experiments, cross-national investigation and political psychology, it explores how people’s views shape key defence decisions. With immersive methods, the research will explore public opinion as the centre of understanding the microfoundations of collective defence.

Join the research team!

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate for a full-time Ph.D. student position who would collaborate with us on the project.

Type of position: Full-time Ph.D. student 

Start date: September 1, 2025

Duration: 42 months full-time employment with salary + 6 months stipend for finalizing the dissertation thesis

Institution: Peace Research Center Prague / Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic)

Salary: 2,500 EUR / month (plus social and health insurance)

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Application requirements: 1) CV; 2) writing sample; 3) 1-page motivation letter

Deadline for applications: January 6, 2025

Your duties and responsibilities

If we select you for the position, you will join the Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP) at the Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University as a first-year Ph.D. student with a dissertation project closely aligned with the focus of the MICROCODE project. You will be working as a member of the MICROCODE project for three and half years (42 months) while simultaneously working on your dissertation thesis (either a monograph or a collection of academic articles). The aim is to complete the Ph.D. study in International Area Studies program over four years, with the last six months being fully dedicated to finalizing your dissertation thesis. 

As a member of the MICROCODE research team, your main task will be to assist with collecting and analyzing empirical data for the project. Furthermore, you will be tasked with creating and regularly updating the MICROCODE online database. You will also have a chance to actively participate in the process of designing and fielding mixed-media experiments and in the organization of project workshops, conferences, and other dissemination activities.

You will be given sufficient time, guidance, and resources to develop your own independent research based on your Ph.D. dissertation project. We expect that the project will be closely aligned with the aims of the overall MICROCODE project, with a more narrow investigation of the role public opinion and elite preferences play in military alliances and collective defence commitments. We welcome both qualitative (elite interviews, focus groups, comparative case studies, archival work…) and quantitative (surveys and survey experiments,  statistical analyses of time series/cross-sectional data, NLP/machine learning…) approaches in your dissertation research. Note that you will also be required to fulfill the usual study obligations of full-time doctoral students at our institution. 

Team and collaboration

At the Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP), you will be an integral part of the Experimental Lab for International Security Studies (ELISS), a research team led by Michal Smetana, the Principal Investigator of the MICROCODE project, who will also serve as your Ph.D. dissertation thesis supervisor. Other team members include Marek Vranka, Ondrej Rosendorf, Lauren Sukin, Giang Mi (Michaela) Nguyenová, and Zakir Rzazade, who will be collaborating closely with you during this project. You will also become a member of the broader PRCP family, a young, dynamic collective that organizes regular research seminars, workshops, public conferences, and social gatherings. 

We offer you

• a full-time employment contract for a period of 42 months;

• € 2,500 salary per month plus social and health insurance;

• financial bonuses for peer-reviewed publications;

• additional six-month stipend to complete the dissertation thesis;

• flexible working hours;

• five weeks paid vacation;

• access to various job benefits;

• travel funds for academic conferences abroad;

• intensive Ph.D. supervision and guidance;

• work in a group of excellent researchers with a friendly and supportive attitude.

Who We Are Looking For

We are looking for an outstanding, ambitious Ph.D. candidate with a deep passion for academic research and the study of international security. The candidate should have:

• a completed Master’s degree in political science, international relations, area studies, political psychology, sociology, or a similar field before September 1, 2025;

• excellent critical thinking and analytical skills;

• experience with independent scholarly research and the ability to effectively employ at least some quantitative or qualitative method(s);

• fluency in English, both written and spoken;

• willingness to learn new things on the go.

How to apply

Please send your CV, one writing sample (e.g., a BA/MA thesis or a published or unpublished research paper), and a 1-page motivation letter to erc.microcode@fsv.cuni.cz by January 6, 2025. Selected candidates will be contacted in January 2025 with an invitation to the second round of the selection procedure consisting of an online interview with the selection committee. 

about microcode

The “Microfoundations of Collective Defence” (MICROCODE) project is funded by the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. It aims to initiate a new research agenda in the study of military alliances and collective defence that puts the relationship between public opinion and elite decision-making at the centre of the analysis.

Building on insights from experimental political science, international relations, sociology, and political psychology, the team behind this project aims to investigate the microfoundations of collective defence as a three-stage process guided by distinct yet interrelated research questions:

(1) How individuals in allied countries form their attitudes towards defending allies;

(2) How these attitudes aggregate to form public opinion shaped by cues from social peers, experts, media, and politicians;

(3) When and how public opinion influences views on collective defence among the decision-makers in allied states.

The ambition of the research team is to conduct an extensive, cross-national investigation in the key NATO member states, employing novel immersive mixed media (video, sound, pictures) survey experiments, elite interviews, focus groups, and other quantitative and qualitative methods.

Research Team