As a postdoctoral researcher you will be responsible for one of the three subprojects of the NWO-funded Open Competition project 'Lifting the Burden of Disease. The Modernisation of Health in the Netherlands: Amsterdam 1854-1926'. This project aims to understand the substantial improvements in life expectancy prior to the 1930s as a result of the decline of infectious diseases, and the principal determinants driving this development, based on individual-level cause-of-death registers for the city of Amsterdam between 1854 and 1926. The project has a multidisciplinary perspective, situated at the interface between infectious disease dynamics and
historical demography.
Three postdoctoral researchers will work on this project, each focusing on one of three arenas in which the effects of mortality determinants are played out:
1) the urban disease environment;
2) the life course and the family, and
3) the physical urban environment at neighbourhood and street levels.
The first subproject will be carried out at Leiden University Medical Centre, subprojects 2 and 3 will be carried out at Radboud University. For a full description of the project, please contact the project leader prof. A. Janssens.
You will work on subproject 3: Lifting the burden of disease: a spatial analysis of infectious diseases. Your postdoctoral research will assess the changing interaction between diseases and 19th-century urban space, and how these spatial patterns reveal the effects of determinants of mortality due to infectious diseases.
You will have three main tasks within the project:
1) To apply GIS techniques for different age groups and diseases to reveal clusters of high and low mortality areas, and to conduct spatial regression to assess the impact of environmental and socio-economic factors on spatial patterns in mortality.
2) To collect additional archival material and data from the Amsterdam city archive and other Dutch source material.
3) To produce spatial tools for valorisation goals, such as an exhibition, in close cooperation with other members of the project team.
You will contribute research results to the project's database. You will present research results in at least three major articles in international scientific journals. Furthermore, you will cooperate closely with the project leaders and the other two postdoctoral researchers, and will participate in the project's programme as a speaker and organiser.