We offer a four-year PhD fellowship on the project Qualitative and Quantitative Social Science: Unifying the Logic of Causal Inference. This full-time fellowship will lead to your completing a doctoral dissertation and defending it at the Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, with a view to obtaining the degree of PhD.

The project looks at the challenges that show up when social scientists want to find out the causes and effects of social phenomena. For example, when social scientists ask questions such as: what are the causes of the wage gap between different ethnic groups? what difference do economic institutions make to economic growth? does the death penalty lower crime? does resource wealth drive violent conflict? does the consumption of pornography increase violence against women?
In particular, the project compares and contrasts the role of qualitative evidence (such as comparative case studies in political science or structured interviews in sociology) with the role of quantitative evidence (analyzed by statistical techniques developed in political science or econometrics, for example).
The fellowship is open for projects in the philosophy of the social sciences in which the focus of the research is the distinction between qualitative and quantitative evidence in the social sciences.
The project is funded by the European Research Council, and is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Erasmus University Rotterdam.
For more details of the project itself, you can click on the “Project Summary” tab at www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/qualitative-and-quantitative-social-science-unifying-the-logic-of-causal-in
For the full application profile, you can view:
https://www.eur.nl/en/fw/about-faculty/working/fully-funded-phd-position-philosophy-social-science-10-fte

OUR SELECTION CRITERIA
As the successful candidate:
• You will have completed (or be near to completing) a master’s degree in philosophy by the time that you take up your fellowship. Master’s degrees in other subjects will also be acceptable if you show a serious interest in analytical, conceptual, methodological, or normative issues.
• Your academic work and record demonstrates your ability to argue rigorously, to structure your ideas clearly, and to engage with academic literatures critically and creatively.
• You are highly motivated to pursue doctoral work in one of the topics specified above, or in a related topic in the philosophy of the social sciences that touches on the qualitative versus quantitative divide.
• You have a good command of English, and strong communication and academic writing skills.
Erasmus is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes all candidates, irrespective of your gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political or religious views, or the like. It is not necessary to have the citizenship of an EU member state.
Knowledge of Dutch is no requirement: the dissertation will be written and supervised in English.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
We expect you to:
• Start work on 1 July 2018, or 1 September 2018 at the latest.
• Complete a PhD thesis within the 4-year contract period.
• Live in Rotterdam (or close enough to Rotterdam) so that you can play an active role in the EIPE research community, by participating in the EIPE research seminars and events, and organizing research events of your own related to the project.

To develop your teaching skills, you may also volunteer to teach philosophy seminars to undergraduate students in English (but this may not take up more than 10 percent of your working time).

Erasmus University Rotterdam offers a salary of 2222 EUR gross per month in the first year. This will increase each year, up to a maximum of 2840 EUR gross per month in the final year. In addition to this, you will receive an annual holiday allowance (amounting to 8% of the annual salary) and an end of year bonus (amounting to 8.3% of the annual salary). This is a contract of employment, rather than a stipend, so you will be obliged to pay Dutch taxes, but you will also receive benefits such as an employer’s contribution to your pension.

Your research will be supervised by Dr Christopher Clarke. You will also have an opportunity  to participate in the project workshops and conferences, and to use some of the project’s 1.5 million euro budget to travel to academic conferences and / or to make research visits to other institutions.

You will be based at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) at the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The academic life of EIPE is vibrant: EIPE is an internationally-renowned centre for research in the philosophy of economics and the social sciences; the EIPE research seminar regularly hosts leading scholars in philosophy, economics, and the social sciences; EIPE hosts the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics (EJPE); and the Research Master programme in Philosophy and Economics has been designated in 2016 and 2017 as a “Top Opleiding”, meaning that it is officially one of the best Masters programmes in philosophy in the Netherlands, and amongst the top 22 of all Masters programmes in the Netherlands.
https://www.eur.nl/fw/english/eipe/
https://www.eur.nl/fw/english/education/philosophy_and_economics/
EIPE events take place in English.