Since its foundation in 1614, the University of Groningen has enjoyed an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative centre of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Balanced study and career paths in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the approximately 37,000 students and researchers to develop their own individual talents. Belonging to the best research universities in Europe and joining forces with prestigious partner universities and networks, the University of Groningen is truly an international place of knowledge.

This PhD will be within the Economics, Econometrics, and Finance research program of the Graduate School of Economics and Business. The Faculty of Economics and Business has an inspiring study and working environment for students and employees. International accreditation enables the Faculty to assess performance against the highest international standards. It also creates an exciting environment for continuous improvement. FEB’s programmes, academic staff and research do well on various excellence ranking lists.

The interdisciplinary PhD will also receive supervision from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS) at the University of Oxford which aims to disrupt and realign conventional thinking to infuse science into demography. The LCDS is a world-leading research centre that is pushing the boundaries of knowledge forward in global health, sociogenomics, computational social sciences, digital and spatial demography, equality and diversity, among other focal areas.

The PhD candidate will work within the EU project, “Mapping Inequalities through the Life Course (MapIneq)”, a multidisciplinary consortium of leading international scholars from 8 countries working to understand the trends and drivers of intergenerational, educational, labour market, and health inequalities over the life course during the last decades (see: https://mapineq.eu/). The candidate will examine the relationship between biosocial (genetic, biomarkers), family environment and local contextual determinants on labour market and occupational outcomes. Restrictions in and changes to opportunities will be examined using microlevel data combined with MapIneq’s geo-coded database to understand the role of the socioeconomic, policy and natural environmental, family socioeconomic and genetic measures (polygenic scores) of education and occupational prestige. The PhD candidate will be given freedom to investigate topics within the scope of the project that fit their skills and interests. The PhD candidate will work closely with the sociogenomics group and senior leads who are also at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford.

As a PhD candidate, you are committed to conduct independent and original scientific research, to report on this research in international publications and presentations, and to present the results of the research in a PhD dissertation, to be completed within 4 years.

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration to discover fundamentally new ways to address social inequalities.

The successful candidate will have:

• a Master’s degree in economics, econometrics, demography, sociology, statistics, geography, epidemiology or a related field
• substantive interest in inequality, labour market, family and/or education research
• experience of working with microlevel survey, register and/or biosocial, genetic data is desirable, or the willingness to learn
• programming experience in R and/or Python
• strong analytical skills in statistics
• expertise or interest in developing skills in database management or web applications (particularly spatial databases such as PostGIS/PostgreSQL or web applications, javascript, Python, SQL).

Fixed-term contract: 48 maanden.

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

- a salary of € 2,541 gross per month in the first year, up to maximum of € 3,247 gross per month in the fourth and final year. PhD candidates contribute around 15% of their time to teaching
- a holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income and an 8.3% end-of-the-year allowance.

An assessment may be part of the procedure, consisting of psychological tests and an interview.

Starting date: as soon as possible