Postdoc Stress in action (0.4 FTE)

Stress is the ‘buzzword’ of modern life and impacts all aspects of daily life. When stress occurs frequently, remains high for sustained periods of time, and/or overwhelms people’s resources, it can cause mental and cardiometabolic disease. The NWO gravitation project Stress-in-Action capitalizes on the fast advances in technology and big data analytics to move stress research from the lab to daily life. A theoretical framework of daily-life stress will be developed using the novel insights from ambulatory assessments in large, long-running Dutch cohorts and from experimental validation studies. This generates a novel understanding of 1) how responses to daily-life stress arise from the temporal, dynamic interplay between context and person-specific factors, 2) how daily-life stress can be reliably measured in a specific individual in real-time, and 3) how and when potential beneficial stress-response mechanisms turn into detrimental effects on mental and cardiometabolic health. This will enable the development of novel monitoring and intervention strategies to track and reduce daily-life stress and its health impact.

We invite applications for one part-time postdoc position to work on the Development of a theory of daily-life stress

Building on the existing literature we will create a new extendable framework that conceptualizes stress as resulting from continuous interactions between key environmental exposures and four subsystems: emotions, cognitive appraisal and regulation strategies, physiological responses, and behavioural reactions. These interactions occur across multiple (short- versus long-term) time scales. Theory development will be mainly based on 1) available existing stress theories, 2) detailed systematic literature reviews, and 3) analyses on existing cohort data. The empirically informed theory will identify specific interactions between subsystems and sensitized interaction patterns between stress-related subsystems over time. By examining time-, person- and context- interactions new avenues will be discovered for the development of data-driven, personalized, and process-informed strategies for stress reduction.

Organisation
The University of Groningen is a research university with a global outlook, deeply rooted in Groningen, City of Talent. Quality has had top priority for four hundred years, and with success: the University is currently in or around the top 100 on several influential ranking lists.

The Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences excels in teaching and research in the fields of human behaviour, thinking, learning, and how people live together. We work on societal issues and problems that people experience in daily life. Central to this is individual and societal resilience and how to increase this. To this end, we focus on the topics of migration, the environment and climate, health, upbringing and education, the protection of vulnerable minorities, and sustainable partnerships. The Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences employs over 650 staff members. For more information about the Faculty please check the link https://www.rug.nl/gmw/ The position is embedded in the Department of Developmental Psychology.

- A PhD degree in Psychology or Health Sciences (or a related discipline).
- A relevant publication record demonstrating your ability to publish international academic publications, preferably in top-tier peer-reviewed journals.
- A clear interest in collaborative interdisciplinary research.
- Excellent command of the English language.
- Ability to work independently and manage joint research activities.
- A team player with strong communication skills.
- Demonstrable competencies such as conceptual capacity, environment orientation, presenting, and result orientation.

We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:

- Depending on qualifications and work experience, a salary of € 4,060 to a maximum of € 5,331 (salary scale 10) gross per month for a full-time position.
- A holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income an 8.3% end-of-the-year allowance.
- Attractive secondary terms of employment
- A temporary employment of 0.4 FTE for a period of four years. You will first receive temporary employment for the period of one year. After a positive Results and Development Interview, the contract will be extended for the remaining period of three years. The position is classified in accordance with the University Job Classification (UFO) system; the UFO profile is Researcher 4.

Intended starting date: 1 June 2025