Institutional drivers disaster resilience Saint Martin

Are you willing to uncover how institutions shape economic and societal resilience to disasters? Do you want to contribute evidence-informed policy solutions to the preparedness of disasters? Join the DISINT research team!

We are seeking a highly motivated research assistant to support the DISINT research project examining the institutional and socio-economic drivers of disaster resilience. The project focuses on the French and Dutch governance approaches in the divided island of Saint Martin and their impact on disaster resilience, particularly in response to Hurricane Irma (2017) and the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022).

What do we offer?

• A dynamic and interdisciplinary research environment.
• The opportunity to receive advanced research training.
• Engagement in a societally relevant research project with real-world impact.
• Co-authorship opportunities on publications and presentations at academic conferences.

If you are passionate about disaster resilience and governance and have the required skills, we encourage you to apply!

Key Responsibilities
The Research Assistant will contribute primarily to data collection and agent-based modeling (ABM) tasks, working closely with interdisciplinary team members to assess how governance structures and social norms influence disaster resilience.

• Assist in collecting and analyzing disaster governance institutional frameworks through automated document analysis and interviews.
• Gather and process macro socio-economic indicators from official statistical sources (CBS, INSEE).
• Support the development of an agent-based simulation model to evaluate the interactions between disaster institutions, social norms, and socio-economic resilience drivers.
• Contribute to the writing of reports, publications, and presentations related to the project.

We offer you an internationally oriented and varied job in an enthusiastic team, with excellent working conditions in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU).

The start date of this position is 1 June 2025 and you will be based at Woudestein Campus in Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB). This position is for 0.8 fte. The salary is dependent on your experience and knowledge and ranges from a minimum of € 3.378 to a maximum of € 5.331 gross per month Scale 10 on a fulltime basis (38 hours), in accordance with the CAO-NU. The contract is offered for a period of 8,5 months.

Everything else we offer you, you can find below!

• Everything you need for a good work-life balance: the option to work from home in consultation with your manager, 41 days of paid leave with a 40 hour contract, 8% holiday pay and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus, and a significant discount on a subscription for our on-campus sports centre!
• Sustainable, inclusive and diverse work environment with an open culture, where you can be yourself and we pay attention to each other and to the world around us. Make the most of our bicycle budget, or join networks such as Young@EUR, FAME or QuEUR.
• Time and space for your development in the broadest sense: development days and a personal career budget and free access to our university library.
• Good pension with ABP that EUR contributes 2/3rds towards, discounts on various collective insurances with Zilveren Kruis Achmea, Loyalis, and Allianz, and compensation for travel, working from home and home internet use.
• Are you currently combining your job with parenthood, or do you want to do so in the future? EUR offers partially paid parental leave and fully paid additional birth leave for partners, and our campus features a daycare (daycare not paid for by EUR).
• Moving to the Netherlands for your job with EUR? Then you may be eligible for the 30%-ruling if you meet the requirements of the Belastingdienst (Dutch tax agency), and with our Dual Career Programme we will also help your partner find the right job for them.

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is an internationally oriented university with a strong social orientation in its education and research, as expressed in our mission ‘Creating positive societal impact’. EUR is home to 4.100 academics and professionals and almost 33.000 students from more than 140 countries. Everything we do, we do under the credo The Erasmian Way – Making Minds Matter. We’re global citizens, connecting, entrepreneurial, open-minded, and socially involved. These Erasmian Values function as our internal compass and create EUR’s distinctive and recognizable profile. From these values, with a broad perspective and with an eye for diversity, different backgrounds and opinions, our employees work closely together to solve societal challenges from the dynamic and cosmopolitan city of Rotterdam. Thanks to the high quality and positive societal impact of our research and education, EUR can compete with the top European universities. www.eur.nl.

Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB)
The Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences is home to a vast diversity of scientific disciplines: public administration, pedagogical sciences, psychology and sociology. In addition, the Erasmus University College, IHS, and two research institutes RISBO and DRIFT are linked to the faculty. This also reflects in the content of the (international) bachelor's and master's programs and in research. Our activities are always focused on people and society. At the ESSB fundamental, internationally oriented research is of paramount importance. In addition, social research for professionals, policy makers, and the society is part of our research activities. ESSB offers a stimulating research environment where major national and international research grants are received. Appealing guest researchers and ambitious PhD candidates come along to conduct their research. Our education is small-scale and works with innovative forms of education such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL). Both the Dutch and English programs are highly ranked by students and alumni. ESSB is home to over 4000 students and more than 400 staff-members. The different disciplines are supported by the Faculty Office (for more information, please visit www.eur.nl/essb).

Department of Public Administration and Sociology (DPAS)

DPAS encompasses the disciplines Public Administration and Sociology: two related scientific fields each with a unique profile. Public Administration studies governance capacity and policy interventions. It focuses on institutional power to organize and intervene in the relations between different social, political and economic actors. Public Administration in Rotterdam goes far beyond the public realm to also pay attention to public-private cooperation and the networks of organizations. Sociology investigates the social structures of societies and the way these evolve. Sociologists in Rotterdam focus, inter alia, on processes of globalization and individualization, and the effects of these processes on international social relations, the labor market and family relations. Social issues that are studied under this banner include migration, flexibilization and solidarity. The perspectives of Public Administration and Sociology complement each other. Together they guarantee a highly relevant and scientific approach to topical administrative and social issues. The bachelor- and master programs of DPAS are built on this profile and develop students into scientifically schooled professionals.

Team Policy, Politics and Society
The team Policy, Politics and Society (PPS) is an interdisciplinary team that does research and provides teaching around a broad set of complex policy issues. Working together based on the principles of team science, PPS aims to provide a stimulating and creative environment for academic development. Besides scientific impact, societal impact and engagement (with communities, governments, organizations) are key trademark of the team. Within PPS, specializations have emerged on a number of complex policy issues, such as institutional reform, welfare and inclusion, European and global governance, resilient cities, e-governance, and on migration and diversity.

Project background

Uncovering the institutional and socio-economic on disaster resilience is particularly challenging as communities have diverse levels of exposure to disasters. Yet, Dutch and French overseas territories offer a unique quasi experimental setting to assess how disaster governance institutions and social norms shape resilience. The Island of Saint Martin is divided into two parts: the Northern part is governed by French regulations while the Southern part is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Both are strongly exposed to natural hazards and regularly threatened by Atlantic hurricane activity in the late summer and early fall. The last major disasters that struck the island where Hurricane Irma (2017) and the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022). However, both parts of the island were impacted in diverse ways. A possible explanation behind such diverging levels of resilience is the diversity of the disaster governance approaches followed by both territories. While the Netherlands tend to rely on a decentralized approach emphasizing the role of social duties; France’s approach is more centralized and relies on the use of extraordinary powers to manage disasters. This research project aims to assess whether disaster governance differences matter to explain varying levels of resilience of both communities to disasters. DISINT is organized in the context of the Convergence’s Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Center and is jointly coordinated by Dr Clara Egger (EUR) and Dr Amineh Ghorbani (TU Delft)