The Department of Communication and Cognition at Tilburg University is looking for an enthusiastic postdoc who will contribute to the development and evaluation of a tool supporting mental health self-management, funded by a recent NWO-KIC grant. You will study how people at risk of serious mental health problems can best be supported using a new digital platform.

Job Description
In this project, we will develop a digital self-management platform that aims to help people with, for example, a history of depression to better monitor their own well-being, in order to prevent a relapse. The platform will take as its starting point an existing experience sampling tool. This is an app which asks participants repeatedly to briefly report on, for example, their thoughts, activities, and emotions on various moments during the day. We will investigate to what extent we can supplement this method with less restricted language and speech data. Additionally, we will explore to what extent other sources of information, such as routine outcome measures, can be integrated in the platform as well.

The working assumption of this project is that by harnessing the potential of these various data sources we can support people who have had a severe mental illness in better monitoring their current mental health. But how can we properly integrate the various sources of data, and what are the best ways to interpret the patterns in these various streams of data? How can we (automatically) provide people with tailored feedback on their recent and current self-reported state-of-mind? What are potential formats to present this kind of information, and how are they appreciated by people, for example in terms of usefulness and understandability? Can we associate patterns in the data with actionable communication strategies? These are some of the questions that the postdoc will study, in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers and stakeholders.

Who we are
The successful candidate will be part of the Department of Communication and Cognition (DCC), within the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD). 

DCC researchers explore cognitive and social aspects of human communication, through a multi-method approach, combining carefully designed experiments with survey methods, corpus analyses, computational modelling, digital ethnography and design research. It is a highly interdisciplinary program, including communication and cognitive science with AI and (computational) linguistics, human-computer interaction, psychology and sociology. Core research topics are communication & technology, verbal and non-verbal communication, health communication, climate communication, information visualisation, language comprehension and production and human-computer interaction. The program includes both fundamental and applied research, the latter often in externally funded research projects, in close collaboration with societal partners. 

DCC staff is also responsible for a successful teaching program in Communication and Information Sciences (CIS), in which students can follow three tracks: Business Communication and Digital Media (BDM), Communication and Cognition (CC) and New Media Design (NMD). The department consists of about 90 researchers covering a broad range of topics relevant for cognition and communication, and includes approximately 30 PhD students and post-docs. 

The NWO-KIC project “Technology-assisted Self-Management: Preventing Relapse and Crisis by the Severe Mentally Ill Themselves” is a six year program that started September 2023, and falls under the umbrella of the university-wide Academic Collaborative Center on Digital Health and Mental Wellbeing. The project is conducted by a team of researchers which also includes people from the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (TSB), the universities of Delft, Maastricht and KU Leuven.

Your Profile
We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate with the following desired qualifications:

• A completed PhD thesis in a relevant discipline (for example, health communication, computational linguistics, medical or clinical psychology, health data science, or comparable). Also candidates who are near completion of their thesis are invited to apply.
• Strong methodological skills and experience with experimental research with human participants.
• A proven interest in computational approaches to data and information presentation (e.g., natural language generation, data visualisation).
• Good communicative and collaborative skills in English and (preferably) Dutch.

We realize this is a lot to ask. Hence also people who are enthusiastic about the position, and are willing to acquire certain missing skills along the way, are invited to apply. There is some room in the project to adapt the research to the specific skills and interest of the successful candidate.

This is a position for 0.8 – 1,0 fte (32 – 40 hours per week) of full working hours. Working hours can be flexible for caring responsibilities. This is a vacancy for a temporary position in accordance with Article 2.3, paragraph 5 of the CLA for Dutch Universities. You will be given a temporary employment contract for the duration of 3 years. Tilburg University offers excellent employment conditions with attention to flexibility and (personal) development and attractive fringe benefits. 

The salary amounts to a minimum of €3.226 and a maximum of €4.036 (gross per month for full-time employment), based on UFO profile Researcher 4 and salary scale 10 of the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities. 

You are entitled to a vacation allowance of 8% and a year-end bonus of 8.3% of your gross annual income. If you work 40 hours per week, you will receive 41 paid days of leave per year. All employees of the university are covered by the so-called General Pension Fund for Public Employers (Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP).  

We make clear agreements about career paths and offer all kinds of facilities and arrangement to maintain an optimal balance between work and private life. You can also follow numerous training courses, for example, in the areas of leadership skills, personal effectiveness, and career development. 

Tilburg University values an open and inclusive culture. We embrace diversity and encourage the mutual integration of groups of employees and students. We focus on creating equal opportunities for all our employees and students so that everyone feels at home in our university community. 

Tilburg University has a lively campus in beautiful green surroundings that is easily accessible by public transport. We are committed to a sustainable society and challenge you to make an active contribution.

Please visit working at Tilburg University for more information on our terms of employment. 

Tilburg University's motto is Understanding Society. Based on this vision, our more than 2,800 employees conduct research, inspire more than 20,000 students of 110 nationalities, and bring people from different disciplines and organizations together to learn from each other. In this way, we want to contribute to solving complex social issues. In doing so, we work from the fields of economics, business and entrepreneurship, social and behavioral sciences, law and public administration, humanities and digital sciences, and theology. We seek the connection between the various disciplines to find solutions to the major issues we face as a society. Our students are educated to become responsible and entrepreneurial thinkers, driven by solidarity, a sense of responsibility, and empathy, who are able to influence and give direction to a rapidly changing society in an innovative way. Tilburg University has a culture of collaboration and co-creation, at local, regional, national, and international level.

Research and education at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) has a unique focus on humans in the context of the globalizing digital society, on the development of artificial intelligence and interactive technologies, on their impact on communication, culture and society, and on moral and existential challenges that arise. The School of Humanities and Digital Sciences consists of four departments: Communication and Cognition, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Culture Studies and Philosophy; several research institutes and a faculty office. Also the University College Tilburg is part of the School. The School has approximately 3100 students and around 270 employees.
Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences