You cannot apply for this job anymore (deadline was 1 Mar 2023).
Browse the current job offers or choose an item in the top navigation above.
How can we explain the chemistry between us? Our sense of smell is a mysterious and delicate sense. Can you play a part in solving the mystery? We are offering two PhD candidate positions (i.e. 2.0 FTE), one devoted to understanding the fundamental basis of chemically communicating emotions (project A) and the other to understanding how smells contribute to romantic relationships (project B).
Communication is crucial to humans. Most of our everyday social interaction and communication is nonverbal. Among the senses we recruit to engage in nonverbal communication, the sense of smell (olfaction) has remained mysterious. For millennia, we have underestimated the role of olfaction. Only recently, the widespread belief that humans are poor smellers has been debunked by experiments revealing excellent human smell skills. With COVID-19, hundreds of millions worldwide have experienced first-hand how smell contributes to our lives, by enabling us to determine whether a food is edible or not, by enabling us to avoid environmental hazards, and by contributing to social communication.
Finding an answer to the big question: 'How do smells affect our social lives?' is a compelling multidisciplinary puzzle. Having acquired a VIDI grant from the Dutch Research Council, Radboud University Assistant Professor Jasper de Groot is now looking for PhD candidates who would like to take on the challenge of unravelling the chemical basis of social smells using a multidisciplinary approach, assessing their importance in ecologically valid domains like romantic relationships, and examining how smell dysfunction targets well-being at a personal and relational level.
In brief, project A focuses more deeply on the chemical signature of fear and its ecological value. This requires an iterative multidisciplinary approach and intensive collaborations with chemical analysts (based in Germany). Project B focuses more broadly on the importance of social smell in romantic relationships. Although smells arguably have most impact when people are as physically close as in romantic relationships, remarkably little empirical evidence exists in this domain.
The position will involve spending 10% of your working time on teaching.
Fixed-term contract: of 18 months, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 2.5 years (4 year contract).
The Behavioural Science Institute (BSI) is a multidisciplinary research institute and one of three research institutes in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Radboud University.
Our researchers collaborate across the boundaries of psychology, educational science, and communication science. Our mission is to strengthen people through understanding the foundations of human behaviour, by creating synergy between different paradigms, and by facilitating craftsmanship, curiosity and connection in academic research.
BSI has seven research programmes covering three major research themes, namely human development, connection, and health. BSI conducts fundamental as well as applied/translational research and has excellent facilities and support for lab and field research. Moreover, BSI is known for its successful graduate school and strong commitment to open science.
You will become part of the Behaviour Change and Well-Being (BCW) research group at BSI, for which the role of sensory input (e.g. smell) in human interaction is a core theme. BCW is led by Prof. Johan Karremans, an expert on romantic relationships. In the other project, Prof. Rob Holland brings in fundamental knowledge on how smells subtly influence our behaviour. Dr Jasper de Groot, who has a long-standing fascination for human olfaction, is the daily supervisor on both projects. Aside from his eagerness to conduct high-quality research on the basis of open-science principles, he is a dedicated and supportive mentor and teacher, proving that getting the best out of people and science can go hand in hand.
We like to make it easy for you, sign in for these and other useful features: