Internship in qualitative research applied to urban health (f/m/d) - Ref: 24-04

The Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) is recruiting an intern in qualitative research applied to urban health (f/m/d)

•Ref: 24-04

•Internship agreement up to 4 - 6 months

•Full-time/40 hours per week 

•Foreseen start date: March-April 2024

•EU research framework program: Horizon ERC Starting Grant FragMent (101040492)

LISER invites highly qualified and motivated applicants for an internship position in the Urban Development and Mobility Department (UDM), under a project funded by the European Union, through Horizon European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant program.

About the FragMent project

Geographic environments, daily activities and stress.

Stress is nearly ubiquitous in everyday life, and imposes a tremendous burden worldwide by acting as a major risk factor of mental disorders, autoimmune, infectious and cardiovascular diseases, and some cancers. The aim of the FragMent project is to evaluate to which extent the spatial and temporal fragmentation of exposures to environments in daily life influences physiological and psychological stress, as well as social inequalities in stress. 

Engaging in daily activities translates into travelling to and staying within a variety of environments over a day. According to the Stress Restorative theory, exposures to daily environments may either act as a contributor to stress or provide some restorative qualities. For example, while greener environments reduce stress, higher built-up density and proximity to traffic do the reverse. Yet, the combination of these momentary effects on stress over a day have so far been largely ignored. While being in a park for one hour may lower down the stress accumulated at the workplace, is it still the case if accessing the park means a difficult 10- minute walk with road crossings, loud noises, and high traffic intensity? Is it still relaxing if instead of reading alone in the park, you watch your kids so they don't hurt themselves or go too far? How does it depend on the activity carried out before, or the environment visited immediately after? How are these exposures and activities distributed across social groups? FragMent builds on a corpus of evidence from neighborhood effect in epidemiology, and creates a bridge with Geography, to investigate the determinants of momentary, daily and chronic stress. 

Your Role

Contribute to the research effort on focus groups to examine the effects of urban environmental characteristics on stress.

This sub-project in FragMent aims to identify and characterize the environmental determinants of stress in urban environments. As evidence on the urban stressors is limited, in addition to the restorative effect of natural environments, FragMent starts with an exploratory approach based on qualitative methods to identify potential stressful and relaxing environmental characteristics. The focus groups in French have been performed in June 2023. The content ot the focus groups explored in depth the definition of stress, the environmental determinants of stress, the situational factors of stressfull situations, and social stress inequalities.

The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to the FragMent project as described above and will participate in the analysis of the focus groups and contribute to write a scientific publication.  

As the project responds to direct concerns of city planners and local political actors to design healthy cities, the selected candidate will contribute to the organization of a participatory workshop, gathering Luxembourg national and local stakeholders, to discuss the environmental determinants of stress as identified in the focus groups by the resident of the country.  

Supervision team

Dr. Camille Perchoux is a research associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), department of Urban Development and Mobility. She is a health geographer with a background in geography and a PhD in Public Health epidemiology awarded in 2015 from Sorbonne University and the University of Montreal. Her research interests include the assessment of neighborhood effect on health at refined spatial and temporal scales, social and spatial inequalities in health, and longitudinal effects of environments on health. Her research involves the use interdisciplinary concepts, methods and tools from epidemiology, geography and transportation research including map-based questionnaires, GPS, (bio)sensors, mobile surveys and virtual reality technology. She is the principal investigator of the FragMent project.

Dr. Monique Simons is an assistant professor at Wageningen University & Research at the Social Sciences group and the Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles chair group in the Netherlands. She has a background in Human Movement Sciences, obtained her PhD in Health Sciences at the VU University and has a diverse and longstanding experience in conducting research and crossing boundaries between science, policy, practice and society in the field of health behavior change. Her expertise is on the role of the context in developing and evaluating interventions (i.e. context-aware interventions) and the role technology can play in this. She has experience in a wide range of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative such as focus groups.  

Your Profile

–You are enrolled as a Master student in a relevant discipline such as geography, environmental psychology, health and society, or public health;

–A completed bachelor in a relevant discipline such as geography, environmental psychology, health and society, or public health is a must;

–Knowledge in qualitative research methods;

–Experience/interest with Focus groups or discourse analysis;

–Advanced skills for writing reports;

–Fluency in French and in English (speaking/writing) is mandatory; 

–Good organizational and communication skills;

–Ability to take own initiatives, as well as a strong ability for teamwork. 

LISER particularly encourage female applicants to apply

Application process

Please submit your complete application (in English) via https://jobs.liser.lu/jobs by joining the following documents:

•Curriculum Vitae ;

•Letter of motivation (maximum 1 page) ;

•Copy of the last obtained diploma and transcripts (i.e., bachelor) ;

•Contact details of one referee (no recommendation letters).

Deadline for applications: February 25th, 2024

If you have any questions on the contents of the work, please contact Dr. Camille PERCHOUX at [email protected] 

For administrative matters, please contact Mrs. Vanya KIROVA at [email protected]  

About LISER

LISER is a publicly funded research institute located in Luxembourg, devoted to applied empirical research in the economic, social and spatial sciences. The institute is located on the new Belval campus in the south of Luxembourg (Cité des Sciences, Luxembourg), which hosts the University of Luxembourg and a substantial part of the country’s publicly funded research facilities, i.e. LISER, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) cross-national data centre, the Luxembourg institutes of Health (LIH) and of Science and Technology (LIST).  

Interdisciplinarity is a key element for stimulating scientific innovation. Research at LISER addresses current and future societal challenges and delivers relevant and independent societal impact and policy advice both at the national and European levels. The institute attracts researchers from all over the world, and delivers high-level doctoral training. The institute‘s staff consists of about 200 employees, 110 of which are researchers active in the fields of economics, sociology, and geography. Information on research in Luxembourg is accessible via the national EURAXESS platform.

LISER is an Equal Opportunity Employer