As a PhD candidate, you will:

• Design studies into understanding climate attitudes and changing climate related behaviour, in particular by interviewing stakeholders, doing social media analysis, and conducting quantitative surveys;

• Investigate how communication may impact public actions;

• Translate this research into scientific papers and conference presentations;

• Intensively collaborate with the partners in the consortium, including societal stakeholders and government;

• Discuss with policy makers citizen’s willingness to change and potential policy implications

Please note that this is a special type of PhD project, focused on making direct societal impact and working as part of a larger consortium. You will work for 20% of your time at the organizations involved in this project (e.g., ministries) on with the aim of improving impact of the research. In addition, 5% of your time will be dedicated to collaboration activities within the consortium. As such, the timeline for the project is longer than traditional PhD projects to ensure there is sufficient time to work on the studies related to the dissertation.

You have a strong interest in applying insights from communication science and social psychology to societally relevant topics and excited about the challenge of investigating climate related attitudes and behaviours using mixed methods. You like to work in multidisciplinary contexts involving people from different backgrounds and stakeholder groups. You combine scientific curiosity and pleasure in the scientific process, with a motivation to make a societal impact.

Your experience and profile

• You have a (research) Master’s degree in Communication Science, Social Psychology or related disciplines, or will obtain this degree before the start of the position;

• Experience with quantitative research methods and data analyses (e.g., SPSS - experience with R is a plus);

• Outstanding organizational skills, high conscientiousness, flexibility, pro-activeness and a collaborative attitude;

• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English;

• An excellent spoken and written command of Dutch (as this project will comprise conducting Dutch-language research among and keeping in touch with Dutch-speaking stakeholders);

• Passionate about making an impact through research, particularly related to climate change, behaviour change, and policy;

• Interested in working in an interdisciplinary team;

• Open to feedback;

• Strongly committed to methodological rigour and scientific integrity; and willing to achieve a high transparency of methods, materials, and data (e.g. pre-registration and Registered Reports);

• Able to work independently;

• Eager to learn and to develop new skills;

• Motivated to share exchange knowledge with academic and non-academic audiences.

The planned starting date for this project is May 1st, 2025. The position concerns temporary employment of 38 hours for a maximum term of five years. The initial employment is for 16 months. Following a positive assessment and barring altered circumstances, this term will be extended by a maximum of 44 months, which should result in the conferral of a doctorate within five years. As indicated above, 25% of the time in the project will be dedicated to impact-related work in the organizations associated with the project and in collaboration activities (not always directly related to the specific work in the dissertation).

• An interdisciplinary setting within ASCoR at the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

• A welcoming environment where you are part of the ECoLab as well as other environmental related research centres like CSDS and Seven;

• A project in which you will collaborate with colleagues from Psychology

• Working on a unique project, combining insights from different fields, working with stakeholders from practice, and contributing to shaping the content of the PhD project;

• An enthusiastic and warm team that is open to new colleagues;

• An opportunity to expand your methodological skill set;

• An inspiring academic and international working environment in the heart of Amsterdam;

• A position in which initiative and input are highly valued.

Exceptionally, this PhD position does not include teaching duties for the PhD candidate (i.e., you will in principle not teach bachelor’s courses as part of your PhD trajectory). Depending on the interest of the PhD candidate, the assessment from ASCoR after 16 months, and the needs from the teaching institutes, the opportunity to teach may be added (up to 5%) to the contract.