MSCA Doctoral Position on Balancing Individual AI-Augmentation with Organisational Stability Universität Zürich

Department of Sociology

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MSCA Doctoral Position on Balancing Individual AI-Augmentation with Organisational Stability 100 %

Start of employment 1 January 2027, temporary

The Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich looks back on more than 60 years of active research and teaching. It is one of the leading empirically oriented institutes in Switzerland and Europe. The basic understanding is based on theory-driven empirical social research with a strong focus on quantitative methods.

About EMANAIRE
EMANAIRE is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network bringing together 15 doctoral candidates at nine European universities to study how AI is changing work. Its projects examine what happens when generative and agentic AI enters leadership, everyday workflows, team communication, professional learning and career decisions. Across the network, human agency means the practical ability to understand AI-supported decisions, exercise judgement, question outputs and shape how work is organised. Each researcher joins an international cohort, receives supervision across institutions and takes part in three residential schools, methods workshops, monthly research seminars and joint work with organisations beyond academia. Every project includes a planned six-month intersectoral secondment.

The doctoral project
Employees often build personal prompt libraries, automations and AI agents before their organisation has agreed common rules. These tools can make an individual faster while creating problems for colleagues who must reproduce the work, review a decision or take over when someone leaves. This project will trace how personalised AI routines and shadow AI develop, and how they affect collaboration, oversight, handovers and organisational resilience. You will compare bottom-up experimentation with formal roll-outs, paying attention to disclosure, trust, control, culture and power. The planned research combines longitudinal case evidence with observation, digital diaries, interviews and collaboration-network analysis. The final organisations, sample, integration of methods and data-governance arrangements will be confirmed with the supervision team. The doctorate will explain how organisations can accommodate useful individual experimentation while maintaining collective continuity. It should identify when personal digital infrastructures become difficult to audit or transfer, and which safeguards help. Expected practical outputs include guidance on disclosure norms, versioning, audit trails and workflow portability, grounded in evidence about how employees actually use AI over time.

Your responsibilities

• Examine through qualitative methods how workers build personalised routines around agentic and generative AI and how these routines affect collaboration, oversight and resilience.
• Compare bottom-up experimentation and shadow AI with formal top-down rollout.
• Combine longitudinal cases, observation, digital diaries, interviews and collaboration-network analysis.
• Develop a framework and practical guidance on disclosure, versioning, audit trails, handovers and workflow portability.
• Refine the research questions and design with the supervision team and prepare ethics, data-management and open-science materials.
• Complete a doctoral thesis and related research outputs under the host doctoral programme and EMANAIRE plan.
• Take part in local and network-wide training, cohort activities, reviews, dissemination and practitioner engagement.
• Undertake the six-month intersectoral secondment and the separate academic mobility visit.
• Contribute to research integrity, equality, responsible AI, open science and FAIR data practices.
• Complete at least 20 ECTS credits of structured doctoral training, including at least 10 ECTS credits through network-wide provision. EMANAIRE combines local doctoral courses with three residential schools, monthly paper-development seminars, work-package workshops and network reviews.

A Personal Career Development Plan will be agreed within the first three months and reviewed every six months.

Your profile

Applicants should hold, or be close to completing by the start date, a relevant master's degree or equivalent and demonstrate the potential to undertake independent doctoral research. Research, policy or industry experience relevant to the project is advantageous.

Project-relevant experience may include

• Interest in digital sociology, work, shadow IT or AI, organisational resilience or technology governance.
• Experience or training in qualitative research and interest in mixed-methods integration.
• Ability to examine organisational culture, power, disclosure and control with analytical sensitivity.

Language skills
Excellent English language skills, both written and spoken, are essential.

MSCA eligibility
Applicants may be of any nationality. To be eligible for MSCA funding, the selected candidate must, on the first day of MSCA employment:
(i) not hold a doctoral degree; candidates who have successfully defended a doctoral thesis but have not yet formally received the degree are not eligible;
(ii) comply with the MSCA mobility rule, meaning they must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Switzerland for more than 12 months during the 36 months immediately preceding that date, excluding compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays, and time spent in a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention; and
(iii) be enrolled in, or meet the conditions required for timely enrolment in, the doctoral programme leading to the degree specified in this notice. The appointment is conditional on documentary verification of these conditions and fulfilment of the host institution's doctoral admission requirements.

Information on your application

We offer

• A fully funded PhD position for 3 years.
• A stimulating, dynamic and supportive research environment.
• A large degree of leeway for creativity, planning, and development of ideas and projects.
• The possibility to work with a certain degree of flexibility (in terms of time and place).

The application should include

• Curriculum vitae.
• Degree certificates and academic transcripts, or evidence that the qualifying degree will be completed before the start date.
• At least two academic or professional references.
• A 2,000-word proposal showing independent engagement with this doctoral project and outlining the proposed focus, methods and relevant literature.
• A declaration covering doctoral status and the MSCA mobility rule.

Please submit your application in only one pdf file until 10 October 2026, 11:59 pm CET.

Location

Department of Sociology
Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland

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Further information

Questions about the job

Gemma Newlands
Professor

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