Postdoctoral Researcher: Lifting the Burden of Disease (subproject 2)

Do you wish to join a high-level research team working jointly on an innovative multidisciplinary research project spanning the fields of historical demography, medical history and historical epidemiology?

This postdoctoral job opportunity is part of a project called ‘Lifting the Burden of Disease. The Modernisation of Health in the Netherlands: Amsterdam 1854-1926’. This project aims to understand the substantial improvements in life expectancy prior to the 1930s as a result of the decline of infectious diseases, and the principal determinants driving this development, based on individual-level cause-of-death registers for the city of Amsterdam between 1854 and 1926. The project has a multidisciplinary perspective, situated at the interface between infectious disease dynamics and historical demography. The project is executed in cooperation with the Leiden University Medical Centre and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

Three postdoctoral researchers will work on this project, each focusing on one of three arenas in which the effects of mortality determinants are played out: 1) the urban disease environment, 2) life course and the family, and 3) the physical urban environment at the neighbourhood and street level. For a full description of the project, please contact the project leader Prof. A. Janssens.

You will work on subproject 2: Lifting the burden of disease: a life-course analysis of victims and survivors of infectious diseases. You will work closely with the project leaders and the other two postdoctoral researchers on the team.

Your postdoctoral research will assess how individual and family characteristics impact upon the risk to die from a specific infectious disease, how this changes over time and how this reflects the principal determinants driving the mortality decline from infectious diseases. You will have three main tasks within the project:

1) To conduct a life-course approach to mortality using vital registration data, combined with the Amsterdam data on causes of death, using complex survival analysis;

2) To collect additional archival material and data from the Amsterdam city archive and other Dutch source material;

3) To produce material for valorisation goals, such as an exhibition and other results for the general public, in close cooperation with the other members of the project team.

You will contribute research results to the project's database. You will present research results in at least two major articles in international scientific journals. Furthermore, you will cooperate closely with the project leaders and the other two postdoctoral researchers, and will participate in the project's programme as a speaker and organiser.