The Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) is looking for 2 PhD candidates with strong methodological skills and an interest in electoral processes in general and generational differences in political behaviour in particular.

What are you going to do?

Both PhD students are expected to complete an ‘article based’ PhD-thesis, within the context of a project that is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This project departs from the idea that, in order to understand patterns of realignment, we need to study generational differences in the mechanisms determining party choice.

Our expectation is that citizens are socialized into evaluating political parties on the basis of the considerations that are most relevant during their late adolescence and early adulthood. These factors remain important for them later in life. So, if the party system realigns along new social and political divisions, changing patterns of party choice will be most visible among the youngest generations, while older generations respond less to these new conditions.

The first PhD project is a large-scale cross-country comparative study to assess to what extent party choice is determined by different factors across different generations and countries. The second project studies how people develop partisan orientations during their impressionable years by a survey that will be conducted among Dutch youngsters and their parents.

You have:

• a (Research) Master's degree in Political Science, or another relevant discipline;    
• an excellent command of quantitative research designs and statistical methods;    
• a strong affiliation with the themes of the project.

You are:

• enthusiastic about doing social science research.

The intended starting date of the PhD position is 1 January 2020.

The position concerns a temporary appointment of 38 hours per week for a maximum term of 4 years. The initial appointment is for one year. Following a positive assessment and barring altered circumstances, this term will be extended by a maximum of 36 months, which should result in the conferral of a doctorate. We will put together a curriculum which will also include the opportunity to attend training courses and both national and international events. You will also be tasked with teaching Bachelor's students.

Your salary will be €2,325 gross per month in the first year and will increase to €2,972 in the final year, based on full-time employment and in keeping with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities. We additionally offer an extensive package of secondary benefits, including an 8% holiday allowance and a year-end bonus of 8.3%.

What else can we offer you?

A challenging work environment with a variety of duties and ample scope for individual initiative and development within an inspiring organisation. The social and behavioural sciences play a leading role in addressing the major societal challenges faced by the world, the Netherlands and Amsterdam, now and in the future.

To work at the University of Amsterdam is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

http://www.uva.nl/en/home

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Department of Political Science

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) is the largest educational and research institution in the social sciences in the Netherlands. The Faculty serves 7,500 students in numerous Bachelor and Master programmes in Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication Science, Psychology, Social Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, and Educational Sciences. The academic staff is employed in education as well as research. There are over 1,100 employees at the Faculty, which resides in a number of buildings in the centre of Amsterdam.

The Department of Political Science is one of the departments of the FMG. The College of Social Sciences (CSW) and the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS) are responsible for the undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in Political Science. The research within the Department is conducted in research programmes of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). The AISSR unites the social science research of the UvA, and is one of the largest research institutes in Europe. In the most recent Shanghai rankings (2019), the political science department was ranked 20th in the world.