Two PhD scholarships at The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS), University of Copenhagen

The Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, invites applications for two 3-year PhD scholarships. The successful candidates will be appointed to the newly established Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) sponsored by the Carlsberg Foundation. The project will be based at CIBS, and will be expected to begin on September 1, 2015 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Description of the project

“Bubbles” are usually considered unwelcome and destabilizing phenomena associated with finance and real estate markets. Generally a bubble has developed when assets trade at prices far exceeding the estimated fundamental value. The guiding research principle of The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) is that bubbles essentially amount to information control problems among deliberating agents who are collectively susceptible to robustly demonstrated socio-psychological features like boom-thinking, group-thinking and lemming effects, which together with determinate market models and conditions may make for bubble-hospitable environments.

CIBS studies bubble phenomena across different ontologies by focusing on the socio-psychological phenomena among agents leading to often irrational group behavior facilitated by imperfect or wrongful information processing among group members influenced by social proof,
being inspired by the main strands of bubble models in economics accordingly study concepts like “social capital”, “opinion”, “fame”, “recognition”, “scientific progress” apparent in other “markets” (agent interactive settings) with particular emphasis on the information-driven dynamics and thus study bubble formation, bursts and deflation across traditional domains and disciplines,
uncovering the formal structure and dynamics, provide simulation and experimental results, offer resolutions of, and recommendations for avoiding (or stimulating benign) bubbles or boom behavior of agents reasoning and processing information in concert.


The advertised PhD scholarships will be part of uncovering the formal structure and dynamics of bubble phenomena across sectors, domains and institutions.

For position 1 we are looking for candidates with a background in economics, preferably with some emphasis on the mathematics of bubble formation, herd behavior and investment, epistemic game theory, interactive epistemology or some adequate combination hereof.
For position 2 we are looking for candidates with a background in formal methods of knowledge representation (from either computer science, logic, mathematics, philosophy, artificial intelligence) with particular emphasis on dynamic epistemic logic, game theory, belief revision, judgment aggregation theory, social network theory or some adequate combination hereof.

The successful candidates will be working in close cooperation with computer scientists, logicians and philosophers, social psychologists and behavioral scientists in order to crack the code of these interdisciplinary objects of scientific inquiry, which bubbles are within the CIBS understanding. It is expected that the successful candidate will be present, part of the team and partake in the activities of CIBS on a daily basis.

For further information, including a copy of the project description for CIBS, please contact Director of CIBS, Professor Vincent F. Hendricks, vincent@hum.ku.dk.

The application should include a proposal outlining the overall themes, sources, methodology, theories and expected outcomes of the PhD project as well as a time-plan. In making this proposal the candidate should describe how the project contributes to the deliverables and overall objectives of the CiBS project.


To see the full version of the call and information on how to apply, please visit the PhD School’s website: http://phd.humanities.ku.dk/how_to_apply/calls/. Please note that all applications must be submitted via an electronic application system.