MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship 2025: Call for expression of interest

Do you want to enhance your career by moving to Oulu to a top-tier research and training environment on human-centered design and digitalization? Send your expression of interest by 31st of May 2025 at the latest.

University of Oulu is an international science university that fosters new knowledge, well-being, and innovations. It is one of Finland's largest and most multidisciplinary universities with 14,000 students and nearly 4,000 employees located in the north of Finland. The positions open are at INTERACT research unit, at the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. The research unit focuses on understanding and supporting participatory design, user-centered design, value co-creation, and user driven innovation in divergent everyday life contexts. Generally, the research unit acknowledges that information technology has become intertwined and embedded in almost all parts of our everyday life, including leisure and civic activity, thereby establishing new forms of participation and design. Hence, “users” cannot be considered as passive consumers anymore, but at least as value co-creators and content producers if not even as (co-)designers and innovators. This calls for reconsidering the traditional understandings of the roles of users, service providers and designers as well as for different development approaches that place emphasis on empowerment and inclusion in designing, shaping, innovating and co-creating information technology in everyday life. The major research themes of the unit are the following:

• Digital transformation in various contexts

• Understanding and strengthening children’s participation and agency in issues concerning their life

• Usability and UX research
 

What We Offer

• Expert supervision and collaboration within a top-tier research and training environment on human-centered design and digitalization.

• Support in preparing the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships application, including individual consultation, proposal review, and guidance from experienced mentors at INTERACT.
 

Topics

We welcome application addressing any of our major research themes. We especially invite applications addressing the following topics:

• Critical AI Literacy for Children

• Critical AI Literacy for Families

• Developing youth strategy and leadership skills in the context of technology education

• Using psychophysiological measurements including eye tracking to study user experience and engagement in gamification applications and mediated communication

• Community participation in urban planning, climate action and sustainable city life

• Fostering transformative agency of children through design and digital technology.
 

List of supervisors: professors Netta Iivari, Marianne Kinnula

Contact info: netta.iivari@oulu.fi
 

Expected qualifications: The candidates should when possible meet the following criteria:

• A recent and relevant PhD (after 2020)
• Good publication record
• International experience
• Good command of spoken and written English
   

Expected timeline

1. Preproposal and research idea for MSCA grant: DL 31st of May 2025
2. DL to submit the MSCA proposal is 10th of Sept 2025
3. Decisions on the MSCA grant February 2026
4. Start of the funded MSCA project at UOULU Sept 2026
    

Assessment and selection of candidates

Please submit a cover letter, a CV, including publications list, and a one-page project idea description. In the first step of the process, we will choose the candidates for developing competitive MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships grant applications. Applicants will be shortlisted by an internal panel and informed if they have been selected for the next stage by 15th of June 2025. The selected applicants will develop their MSCA PF proposal in cooperation with their future supervisor at INTERACT Research Unit.  In addition, they will be offered individual consultations and review of their MSCA PF proposal.