info for graduate students | project manager | postdoc | info for undergraduates | part-time positions | honours thesis students
If interested in joining the lab as a doctoral student, feel free to contact Dr. Grossmann. If interested in joining the lab as an undergraduate research assistant, please fill out the application form.
Available Positions
Research project manager
How does the meaning people assign to fairness, cooperation, trust, and reciprocity shape the choices they make? This international project examines whether cultural narratives of the choices we make help explain and predict decision-making beyond standard economic and psychological models. Working with Professor Igor Grossmann (University of Waterloo) and co-investigators Cendri Hutcherson (University of Toronto) and Samuel Johnson (Waterloo), and drawing on the network of the Wise Judgment Consortium, the project will build one of the largest and most linguistically diverse datasets ever assembled on representation (or “construal”) of canonical economic games and social dilemmas across societies, distributed across 12+ countries.
Projects at this scale succeed or fail on coordination. We are looking for someone who can turn scientific plans into coordinated, launch-ready studies across countries, languages, institutions, and recruitment platforms.
Key responsibilities include:
• Own the master project plan across 12+ sites: maintain timelines, milestones, dependencies, decision logs, and action items; anticipate bottlenecks and flag slippage early with proposed solutions.
• Serve as the primary coordination point between the PI, co-investigators, and international site leads: prepare meetings, track decisions and action items, follow up on deliverables, and maintain clear documentation of site-specific issues and adaptations.
• Prepare and shepherd research ethics submissions at Waterloo and coordinate partner-institution approvals across jurisdictions.
• Develop, pilot, and adapt study materials with the investigator team, including instrument drafting, survey platform programming, translation/back-translation, cognitive interviews, and version control across multiple languages; ensure that local adaptations remain consistent with the shared research protocol.
• Coordinate online and in-person recruitment; monitor enrollment, sample composition, data quality, participant compensation, expenditures, and vendor performance against project targets.
• Coordinate the project's open-science and research-documentation pipeline: OSF pre-registrations and repositories, codebooks, metadata, and secure storage protocols.
• Work closely with postdocs and graduate students on study design and implementation; recruit, train, and coordinate undergraduate research assistants working on project-specific tasks.
This is a hands-on research role, and not an administrative position. The Project Manager will be the operational driver of study development and implementation: drafting and programming materials, coordinating pilots, solving implementation problems, and ensuring that decisions are translated into functioning protocols across sites.
Employment details:
• Appointment: Approximately 24 hours/week (0.7 FTE), initially for 12 months, renewable annually through the life of the grant, subject to funding and performance.
• Compensation: $25–30/hour, depending on experience and qualifications.
• Location: Based at the University of Waterloo; hybrid work is possible, with periodic on-campus meetings.
• Schedule: Hours are flexible and can be concentrated into three or four days, but will need to overlap periodically with partners in European, African, and Asian time zones. Most work will occur during normal Eastern Time working hours.
• Start date: Fall 2026, with some flexibility.
Required Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in psychology, cognitive science, behavioural economics, sociology, or a related quantitative or social-science field.
• Hands-on experience developing and running behavioural or survey studies (incl. materials development, survey programming, piloting, recruitment, or data-quality monitoring).
• Evidence of exceptional organization and follow-through in managing multiple concurrent research or professional workstreams, deadlines, and collaborators. Ability to identify emerging problems, propose practical solutions, and follow issues through to resolution with limited supervision.
• Excellent written English and the ability to communicate clearly, tactfully, and efficiently with collaborators across cultural and institutional contexts.
• Experience with Qualtrics or comparable survey software and comfort working with structured research files, naming conventions, version control, and reproducible documentation.
• Exceptional attention to detail combined with the judgment to distinguish urgent problems from minor imperfections.
Assets:
• Research ethics/REB submission experience.
• Experience with multilingual or cross-cultural research.
• Working knowledge of a language represented among consortium sites.
• Experience with online participant platforms such as Prolific, CloudResearch, Besample, or Credamo.
• Experience coordinating or supervising undergraduate researchers.
• Working knowledge of R or Python.
• Experience working with qualitative, mixed-method, or narrative/text data.
We do not expect one candidate to embody every skill above. More important are exceptional organization, follow-through, practical judgment, calm problem-solving, and genuine curiosity about how people understand fairness and cooperation differently across cultures. Project-specific tools and procedures can be learned on the job.
Who is this position for:
This position may be particularly well suited to a recent BA/BSc or MA/MSc graduate considering graduate school, research management, policy, or industry research who wants substantial responsibility for a large international research project.
You gain:
The position offers direct experience taking large international studies from concept through ethics, piloting, multilingual adaptation, preregistration, launch, data collection, and open-science release. You will work closely with investigators across psychology, decision science, computational methods, and cultural psychology and develop a portable track record in international research operations. Co-authorship is possible where contributions meet substantive CRediT-style authorship criteria. Previous lab members have subsequently pursued careers in academia, government, and industry research.
Application Information:
• Deadline: Applications will be reviewed beginning September 15, 2026 and will continue until the position is filled.
• Materials: CV and a one-page letter. In your letter, tell us about a project you kept on track when something went wrong. Briefly describe what went wrong, what specific actions you personally took, and what happened as a result.
• Contact: Dr. Grossmann at igrossma@uwaterloo.ca (subject line: “Cultural Narratives PM”]
• Canadian immigration-status statement: Please include one of the following statements with your application: “I am a Canadian citizen/permanent resident of Canada” OR “I am not a Canadian citizen/permanent resident of Canada.”
Equity Statement:
The University of Waterloo is committed to equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigenous reconciliation, and encourages applications from all qualified individuals. Priority will be given to Canadians and permanent residents in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements and ESDC mandates.
Postdoctoral Fellowship
Postdoctoral Position for Fall 2026 / Winter 2027
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Decision-Making and Cultural Narratives
University of Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
The Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, directed by Igor Grossmann, is seeking applications for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to join a new international project on cultural narratives and decision-making, starting in Fall 2026 / Winter 2027. The postdoc is structured as a one-year appointment with opportunity for renewal at the one-year mark assuming excellent performance.
POSITION DESCRIPTION: The successful candidate will help lead a multi-society project examining how cultural narratives shape behavior in canonical economic and coordination games. The project pairs harmonized game protocols with structured narrative probes across a global consortium spanning societies across five continents, and culminates in a ManyLabs-style intervention study testing whether locally resonant narrative framings can foster cooperation more effectively than standard material incentives. The work sits at the intersection of decision science, behavioral economics, cultural psychology, and computational sciences, drawing on multilingual large language model (LLM) topic modelling combined with cross-cultural human-in-the-loop validation. Our interdisciplinary team is at the forefront of experimental wisdom and culture research, and the post-doctoral associate will have the opportunity to contribute to ongoing studies, develop new ones, co-author publications, help coordinate the international consortium, mentor graduate and undergraduate trainees, and advance their independent program of research.
QUALIFICATIONS. Competitive candidates will have: a PhD in social psychology, cognitive/decision sciences, behavioral economics, or a closely related discipline by the time of appointment; a strong track record of research; excellent quantitative and statistical skills; excellent manuscript writing skills; and demonstrated interest in at least two of the following: cross-cultural research, behavioral game theory (e.g., ultimatum, dictator, public goods, trust, or coordination games), moral and social judgment, cultural psychology, or computational social science. Hands-on experience with computational text analysis — including topic modelling, embeddings, fine-tuning of LLMs, human-in-the-loop validation pipelines — is required. Strong programming skills in R and/or Python and experience with reproducible analytic workflows are greatly desired. Familiarity with multilingual data and prior collaboration on large international research consortia are assets.
Salary will be benchmarked above the postdoctoral fellowship recommendation paid by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), commensurate with experience, plus benefits. Postdoctoral candidates who have their own funding may also apply.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS. Please submit the following materials to Berke Aydas (lab manager) via email:
a cover letter; CV; a 2–3 page personal/research statement containing biographic information, relevant research experience, and career goals; up to three sample publications (with at least one demonstrating quantitative and/or computational text analysis work, where possible); and the contact details of three referees by May 31. Review of applications will continue until the position is filled.
Please direct inquiries to Dr. Grossmann.
Graduate students
You can learn more about research in the lab under Research. To apply, check out the University of Waterloo's Social Psychology program and admission and application procedures.
Undergraduate students
Responsibilities for research assistants usually include: conducting experiments, coding data, analyzing data, and participating in laboratory discussions.
We ask for a minimum 10 hr/wk commitment, for at least two semesters. This arrangement allows you and the lab group to benefit from your training and skills.
Part-time volunteer and paid positions
Undergraduates can get involved in our lab in a number of ways. Every term, there are a number of volunteer research assistants who work in the lab. Paid research assistant positions are also sometimes available, typically after at least one term as a volunteer. If you are interested in working in the lab, please submit:
- The lab application form
- A letter of intent indicating your interests, what kind of research experience you are seeking, what capacity you would like to work in (work study, academic credit, etc.), and when you would be available to start.
- Your resume
- Your transcript (unofficial transcripts OK)
- Two or three names of reference (professors, bosses, TAs, etc.)
- Send this information to: baydas@uwaterloo.ca
Honours thesis students
If you are interested in completing your honours thesis in the lab, please contact Professor Grossmann to arrange a meeting to discuss your research interests. The first available openings are for students beginning in Fall 2025 (September 2025). Availability is updated on a rolling basis as new terms approach. Interested students should contact Professor Grossmann at least one term in advance of their intended thesis start date.