The
department of Developmental Psychology has an interesting PhD position in which we try to find out how we can help young people change their construal of adversity.
Your job Narrative identity is defined as a life story that incorporates the past, present and future, and gives purpose, meaning, and unity in life. Constructing a narrative identity is vital and has been shown to foster wellbeing. Forming a cohesive narrative identity might be difficult for young people who grow up in cultures different from their parents’ home culture. Specifically, being uprooted from one’s familiar environment during a time when one’s narrative identity is still in development, can complicate the establishment of an adaptive narrative identity. This may be especially pertinent when such uprooting is forced and compounded with trauma exposure, such as with young refugees. Trauma exposure may make it more difficult for young people to construct adaptive narratives about who they were, who they are, and where they are headed, as adverse life events are more difficult to incorporate into a coherent life story.
How do life stories of young people exposed to adversity (e.g., young refugees) differ from those of others? To understand the effects of adversity on specific features of young refugee’s narratives, we need to disentangle the effects of cultural uprooting and refugee experience from normative developmental effects. We will therefore:
- examine if young refugees show different features in the way they tell their stories in comparison to third-culture-kids, and a community sample;
- test narrative features as drivers of well-being; and
- identify differential effects of a writing intervention for young individuals from refugee, third-culture, and community backgrounds.
Your main responsibilities are to co-design and conduct research to address the research questions, analyse data, and disseminate research findings to the scientific community and other stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, healthcare professionals, educators).
You will be embedded within the programme Developmental Psychology. The advisory team consists of Dr Hend Eltanamly and Dr Liselotte den Boer (daily advisors), and Professor Sander Thomaes and Professor Jaap Denissen (promotors). The position includes 10% teaching tasks, with the possibility to extend to 20%.