PhD position Biosocial and contextual determinants of Inequality (1.0 FTE)

PhD position Biosocial and contextual determinants of Inequality (1.0 FTE) (V23.0131)

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Job description

Since its foundation in 1614, the University of Groningen has enjoyed an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative centre of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Balanced study and career paths in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the approximately 37,000 students and researchers to develop their own individual talents. Belonging to the best research universities in Europe and joining forces with prestigious partner universities and networks, the University of Groningen is truly an international place of knowledge.

This PhD will be within the Economics, Econometrics, and Finance research program of the Graduate School of Economics and Business. The Faculty of Economics and Business has an inspiring study and working environment for students and employees. International accreditation enables the Faculty to assess performance against the highest international standards. It also creates an exciting environment for continuous improvement. FEB’s programmes, academic staff and research do well on various excellence ranking lists.

The interdisciplinary PhD will also receive supervision from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS) at the University of Oxford which aims to disrupt and realign conventional thinking to infuse science into demography. The LCDS is a world-leading research centre that is pushing the boundaries of knowledge forward in global health, sociogenomics, computational social sciences, digital and spatial demography, equality and diversity, among other focal areas.

The PhD candidate will work within the EU project, “Mapping Inequalities through the Life Course (MapIneq)”, a multidisciplinary consortium of leading international scholars from 8 countries working to understand the trends and drivers of intergenerational, educational, labour market, and health inequalities over the life course during the last decades (see: https://mapineq.eu/ ). The candidate will examine the relationship between biosocial (genetic, biomarkers), family environment and local contextual determinants on labour market and occupational outcomes. Restrictions in and changes to opportunities will be examined using microlevel data combined with MapIneq’s geo-coded database to understand the role of the socioeconomic, policy and natural environmental, family socioeconomic and genetic measures (polygenic scores) of education and occupational prestige. The PhD candidate will be given freedom to investigate topics within the scope of the project that fit their skills and interests. The PhD candidate will work closely with the sociogenomics group and senior leads who are also at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford.

As a PhD candidate, you are committed to conduct independent and original scientific research, to report on this research in international publications and presentations, and to present the results of the research in a PhD dissertation, to be completed within 4 years.

Qualifications

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration to discover fundamentally new ways to address social inequalities.

The successful candidate will have:

• a Master’s degree in economics, econometrics, demography, sociology, statistics, geography, epidemiology or a related field
• substantive interest in inequality, labour market, family and/or education research
• experience of working with microlevel survey, register and/or biosocial, genetic data is desirable, or the willingness to learn
• programming experience in R and/or Python
• strong analytical skills in statistics
• expertise or interest in developing skills in database management or web applications (particularly spatial databases such as PostGIS/PostgreSQL or web applications, javascript, Python, SQL).

Organisation
Conditions of employment

We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:

• a salary of € 2,541 gross per month in the first year, up to maximum of € 3,247 gross per month in the fourth and final year. PhD candidates contribute around 15% of their time to teaching
• a holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income and an 8.3% end-of-the-year allowance.

An assessment may be part of the procedure, consisting of psychological tests and an interview.

Starting date: as soon as possible

Application

If you are interested, you can send your application until 19 March 11:59pm / before 20 March 2023 Dutch local time (CET) by means of the application form (click on "Apply" below on the advertisement on the university website).

The application package must include the following documents:

1. A motivation letter (max two pages; A4 single side)
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Transcripts from your Master’s degrees
4. Proof of English proficiency.

Also include contact information for two academic references. Please do not submit letters of reference. If necessary, we will contact the referees ourselves.
The documents 1-4 are compulsory and note that incomplete application packages or applications sent by email will not be taken into account. If necessary – because of the limited upload options - you can combine different documents into one pdf.

The University of Groningen strives to be a university in which students and staff are respected and feel at home, regardless of differences in background, experiences, perspectives, and identities. We believe that working on our core values of inclusion and equality are a joint responsibility and we are constructively working on creating a socially safe environment. Diversity among students and staff members enriches academic debate and contributes to the quality of our teaching and research. We therefore invite applicants from underrepresented groups in particular to apply. For more information, see also our diversity policy webpage: https://www.rug.nl/(...)rsity-and-inclusion/

Our selection procedure follows the guidelines of the Recruitment code (NVP): https://www.nvp-hrnetwerk.nl/nl/sollicitatiecode and European Commission's European Code of Conduct for recruitment of researchers: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/charter/code

Unsolicited marketing is not appreciated.

Information

For information you can contact:

• Prof. Melinda Mills, [email protected]
• Dr Douglas Leasure, [email protected]
• Prof. Gerard van den Berg, [email protected]

Please do not use the e-mail address(es) above for applications.

Apply