Do you enjoy working in an international and interdisciplinary environment? Do you value inclusive education, and do you want to foster academic integrity and critical thinking in students? This position may be for you!

In this (temporary, 1 year) position you will be responsible for coordinating and teaching a new Academic Skills course for Bachelor AI students and supervise teaching assistants for this course. This course is to start February 2027 and you will be the main teacher and coordinator for this course, but will have a co-teacher.

Your responsibility will be to co-develop the new course, together with your co-teacher, in line with the new Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and integrate relevant aspects of Critical AI Literacy. Core to this teaching is that students are taught to read, write and think critically, all by themselves, and without any cognitive offloading (e.g. to so-called ‘AI’-tools or otherwise). It also means that students are taught to do this to the highest standard of scientific and academic integrity, despite the many possible distractions or existing pressures to deviate from this.

You will also serve as a member of the AI Examination Board and contribute to the further innovation of the Academic Skills line throughout the AI program and actively collaborate with other Lecturers in the program to achieve this. This may include teacher contributions to existing courses (e.g. Advanced Academic and Professional Skills in the Master Artificial Intelligence). You will partake in teacher training, mentoring, and biweekly Lecturer meetings.

What do we ask?

• A PhD degree in any academic discipline, where skills such as reading literature, academic writing, and critical thinking are valued and thoroughly trained.
• Demonstrable competence in teaching academic skills.
• You are trained in, or open to be mentored on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), incl. decolonisation of the curriculum.
• You are open to learning about and being mentored on critical AI literacy.
• You have an open and collegial attitude and are willing and able to collaborate with others in line with the department’s mission.

We especially encourage women, nonbinary people, and other people from otherwise underrepresented or minoritized groups to apply.

Important: We can only consider applicants who already have a work permit for working in the Netherlands at the time of application.

Work environment

You will work as a Lecturer in the School of AI in the Faculty of Social Sciences and be embedded in the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. The department’s mission is to contribute to sustainable and inclusive research and education in Cognitive Science and AI. Our research aims at advancing the theoretical, computational, and empirical foundations of cognitive science (i.e., the interdisciplinary study of cognition, spanning psychology, computer science/AI, philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics). Our education aims at teaching fundamental knowledge and skills in cognitive science and artificial intelligence.

The department hosts research groups (Computational Cognitive Science, Dynamic Naturalistic Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, and Metatheory) and a group of lecturers (Programming & Formals Skills, Cognitive Science, Academic Skills, and Critical Intersectional Perspectives on AI). The department is committed to promoting and maintaining a culture of respect, diversity and inclusion regardless of the different layers of staff members’ identity (sexual orientation, gender, race and ethnic background, economic status, disability, age, etc.), and to any other aspect of ourselves at the intersection of all these layers.

Context Info

The formal vacancy text will be online shortly. This pre-announcement is made to already draw attention to this opportunity, because the deadline will be soon (November 29; with interviews on December 7). The reason for this is that we need to fill this position urgently to temporarily replace an unavailable colleague. While this position is temporary, we are committed to supporting the professional development of the successful candidate and support them through letter of recommendations for follow-up options and mentoring.

For more info, feel free to contact me: i.vanrooij@donders.ru.nl

Acknowledgements

Banner Illustration by lilik gunawan on Unsplash