PhD Position: Providing informal care to loved ones at the expense of one’s social relations?

Work with a multidisciplinary team on sustainable societies and well‑being. This PhD project studies how caring for a loved one with health issues can affect relationships with partners, friends, and family.

This PhD project is part of the SOCION consortium. SOCION addresses a pressing challenge of our time: fragmentation in societies. Social cohesion is society’s fabric and it is key to sustainable societies and citizens’ well-being. However, it is increasingly undermined by erosion and polarisation between communities, factions, and groups. In this project, psychologists, social historians, demographers, philosophers, and sociologists collaborate with civic organisations to generate and integrate insights into how connections between individuals, groups, and institutions contribute to new pathways to and forms of social cohesion.

This specific PhD project, entitled “Providing informal care to loved ones at the expense of one’s social relations?”, starts from the societal observation that population ageing results in a growing need for care, which increasingly falls on informal caregivers: people in the personal network of the person who needs help. This PhD project explores the consequences of providing informal care for the quality of caregivers’ social relations. If providing informal care reduces the quality or number of the caregivers’ relations with their partner, family, or friends, informal carers will lack the network they need once they require care themselves. Combining sociological and social-psychological theoretical mechanisms, this project answers the question of whether, why, and under which conditions providing informal care has consequences for informal carers’ social relations. As such, it provides key insights into how we may optimize care arrangements. More information on the project can be found here.

As a PhD candidate you will conduct your research, and take part in the SOCION consortium and ICS Graduate School. In addition, you will devote 10% of your time to teaching in the context of the Sociology programme at Radboud University.

Would you like to learn more about what it’s like to pursue a PhD at Radboud University? Visit the page about working as a PhD candidate.

• We will give you a temporary employment contract (1.0 FTE) of 1.5 years, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, your contract will be extended by 2.5 years (4-year contract).
• You will receive a starting salary of €3,059 gross per month based on a 38-hour working week, which will increase to €3,881 in the fourth year (salary scale P).
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

Additional employment conditions
Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions. You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.

Faculty of Social Sciences
At the Faculty of Social Sciences, humanity and society are our focus; we study how people behave, think and feel. Within this context, we look at themes such as human behaviour and the human psyche, education and upbringing, communication, society and culture. The faculty provides education to 6,000 students and employs 700 staff. Education is organised into six programme clusters: Psychology; Artificial Intelligence; Pedagogical Sciences and Educational Sciences; Communication Science; Sociology; and Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology, and the Radboud Centre Social Sciences as an institute for post-master education have been merged into the Social Sciences Education Institute. Our research is carried out within three research institutes: the Donders Centre for Cognition, the Behavioural Science Institute, and Radboud Social Cultural Research.

Radboud University
At Radboud University, we aim to make an impact through our work. We achieve this by conducting groundbreaking research, providing high-quality education, offering excellent support, and fostering collaborations within and outside the university. In doing so, we contribute indispensably to a healthy, free world with equal opportunities for all. To accomplish this, we need even more colleagues who, based on their expertise, are willing to search for answers. We advocate for an inclusive community and welcome employees with diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives. Will you also contribute to making the world a little better? You have a part to play.

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You will work at the Department of Sociology at Radboud University. The department’s central research themes are inequality, family and social relationships, and processes of inclusion and exclusion. The department employs approximately 25 staff members and the atmosphere is informal and collegial. You will take part in the SOCION consortium. In addition, you will follow your PhD training at the renowned ICS Graduate School together with fellow PhD candidates from Utrecht, Groningen, Amsterdam, and Nijmegen. The Department of Sociology is part of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. The research conducted in the context of this position is aligned with the ‘changing inequalities’ research line of the Radboud Social Cultural Research (RSCR) institute. RSCR is a research institute within the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences and consists of the following groups: Sociology, Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, and Gender and Diversity Studies. RSCR’ overall aim is to improve understanding of the processes leading to inequalities in various societies through investigating the societal phenomena of social inequality and inclusion.

You can apply only via the button below. Address your letter of application to Ellen Verbakel. In the application form, you will find which documents you need to include with your application. We look forward to receiving your application.

The first interviews will take place on Monday 20 April. Any second interview will take place on Tuesday 28 April. You will preferably start your employment on 1 September 2026.

We can imagine you're curious about our application procedure. It describes what you can expect during the application procedure and how we handle your personal data and internal and external candidates.