A fully-funded 4-year PhD position is available at the Department of Methodology and Statistics of Tilburg University, to work on the development of text mining methods for qualitative evidence synthesis of the published literature, in order to identify relevant constructs and potentially causal relationships among them. The project will be supervised by dr. Caspar van Lissa, dr. Bennett Kleinberg, and prof. dr. Jeroen Vermunt. The successful candidate will benefit from an active research environment, membership in a prolific research group, and an existing network of national and international collaborations.

The employment is primarily dedicated towards carrying out the proposed research described below, writing several academic articles that are publishable in open access peer-reviewed academic outlets and implementing the resulting methods in open source research software. The position also involves contributing to teaching. The position and the environment in which the candidate will be embedded provide an optimal starting point for a possible academic career. The candidate will follow a customized track of graduate courses as part of the IOPS program which will further develop the candidate’s research skills and background knowledge. 

The candidate should be knowledgeable about data science, in particular text mining or Natural Language Processing (NLP) more broadly, and also have a broader interest in multidisciplinary challenges in academia, such as the open science movement, the replication crisis, or the theory crisis. The candidate should have completed (or be near the completion of) a master’s degree with excellent academic results in data science, artificial intelligence, computer science, methodology, statistics, mathematics, psychometrics, quantitative psychology, or a related field. The position requires competence in R and/or Python. Academic curiosity and an interest to collaborate in a multidisciplinary context are a prerequisite.

Terms of employment
Initially the appointment will be on a temporary basis for the period of 1 year. After a positive first year evaluation the contract will be prolonged for 3 years.

The salary for the position of PhD-candidate on a full-time basis ranges between € 2.443,- and € 3.122,- gross per month. 
Tilburg University is among the top Dutch employers and has an excellent policy concerning terms of employment. The collective employment terms and conditions for Dutch universities will apply.

Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (TSB) is a modern, specialized university. The teaching and research of the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences are organized around the themes of Adaptive societies, organizations, and workers, Healthy life span, Personalized prevention and care. The School's inspiring working environment challenges its workers to realize their ambitions; involvement and cooperation are essential to achieve this.
Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences