amsterdam phd vacancies

PhD Programme Social Sciences

Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research / AISSR

• PhD Application
• PhD Training & Support
• Overview dissertations

Project & activities

During your PhD appointment, which typically lasts three to four years, your primary focus will be conducting research for your doctoral dissertation. However, we also encourage you to engage in other activities such as taking courses offered by the PhD Training Programme, teaching undergraduate courses in the Departments of Social Sciences, and actively participating in the research community, both within AISSR and at national and international levels.

Close-knit community

As a PhD student at AISSR, you will be part of a vibrant community that values your growth and development. We offer coaching, training, and a strong PhD Community to support you throughout your doctoral journey. We encourage our students to publish their research early in their careers, enhancing their academic profiles and fostering their future career prospects.

Programme Groups

You will be assigned to an AISSR programme group where you will conduct your research and be immersed in a supportive and collaborative environment. We are excited about newly interest in pursuing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam and look forward to welcoming postgraduate students to our dynamic academic community at AISSR.

Communication with others, categorizing and identifying people and objects, establishing symbolic and moral boundaries, is strongly influenced by culture. Moreover, culture is the way we try to understand and interact with the world around us. At Cultural Sociology, the way social meanings and expressions associate culture will be questioned. How do people create status differences and maintain boundaries between groups? How are international beauty standards (re)produced?

The Institutions, Inequalities, and Life courses programme (IIL) examines institutions in a broad way as the formal and informal rules and arrangements in society that govern individual behavior and social relationships. Examples of institutions are welfare states, labor market arrangements, educational systems, occupational groups, norms and rules in organizations, and gender role norms.

The programme group Political Sociology researches evolving relations of conflict and cohesion in various national and international settings. Our research on citizenship, politics, policies, social movements and the state extends beyond actor-centred approaches through relational analyses and a keen eye for power differentials.

Governance and Inclusive Development (GID) scrutinizes development dynamics at various geographical, jurisdictional and temporal scales, realizing that these are situated in different but interconnected multi-level processes. GID analyses and rethinks dominant development paradigms, and engages with international, national and local development practices, policies and debates to identify viable and socially just alternatives.

The Political and Economic Geographies (PEG) group investigates the role of multi-scalar relationships that are crucial in understanding contemporary economic and political geographies.

The researchers within Urban Geographies study the socio-spatial processes that shape cities and urban life across the world. Our research concentrates on the formation of urban difference and inequality. It seeks to understand how specific spaces, places and mobilities reflect, reproduce and transform social differentiation in terms of class, ethnicity, generation, gender and sexuality. In addition, it studies how resources, risks and political voice are distributed unevenly across urban spaces and populations, analyzing geographies of inequality within and between city regions.

Urban Planning research and teaching at the University of Amsterdam focuses on the relationships between the social, spatial, and environmental dimensions of urban processes, and on ways of purposefully and positively impacting on them.

The research program Challenges to Democracy studies the consequences of current political developments and their historical roots for democratic governance. How do democratic regimes maintain political stability? To what extent can they deliver political equality, legitimacy and prevent societal polarization?

Ongoing trends towards transnational integration of markets and economic transactions are giving rise to far-­reaching transformations of governance both within and beyond the nation-state. The Political Economy and Transnational Governance (PETGOV) programme group focuses on the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of these epochal developments in political and economic life.

In recent decades, there has been a growing divergence between the organisation of society and the inherited conceptual framework of the 20th century political sciences. The Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance group seeks to re-examine established notions of identities, categorizations and boundaries defined by classical political science concepts through different forms of empirical investigation.

We investigate the manifold ways gender, race, class, citizenship, religion, and sexuality are made and unmade in everyday life, including the ways in which differences and similarities among people, communities, and other living things are created, contested, celebrated or distrusted. We are interested in the everyday experiences of belonging and exclusion and how they shape individuals, institutions, and environments in lasting ways. Our research delves into the political dimensions and the impact these have on people's aspirations and pursuits. We investigate the aesthetics of these world making projects, their pasts, presents and futures.

The Health, Care, and Body programme group aims to analyse evolving health experiences, sexual identities, body practices, and social/cultural influences on scientific knowledge utilization in clinical settings. It also examines care and self-help practices, the exercise of biomedical power, and patterns of resistance or acceptance of medical regimes, scientific knowledge, and technology.

The social consequences of the mobility of people, goods, power, and ideas constitute the central focus of the Moving Matters research programme. Members of the research group explore migrating people and moving commodities, as well as the shifting networks that result from such practices. These networks stretch from the local to the transnational and necessarily involve encounters with the state through deportation regimes, access to resources and technologies, border infrastructures, decolonial and postcolonial movements, labour relations, and violence and conflict.

More information can be found on the AISSR wiki. This an informative platform for all (and only) AISSR researchers with internal information like guidelines, policy documents, templates and more.

If you have any questions or require further information, please don't hesitate to reach out to our PhD Coordinator, Mr. Simon Cijsouw.

AISSR PhD Coordinator

[email protected]

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PhD Recruitment Process

Timeline of hiring process 

(This is information of the hiring process in 2023/2024. For the 2024/2025 process, please refer back to this page after the summer break 2024)

Mid-October to Early-November

• applications open 

Late November/Early December

• selected candidates will be contacted with instructions on how their referees can submit the reference letters

Mid-December 

• successful applicants will be invited to our `PhD recruitment days’ in February 

8-9 February you will :

• give a presentation on your research work
• meet the staff offering PhD positions
• meet our current PhD researchers and postdocs
• be interviewed for the positions which you are interested in.

Mid-February to March

• offers for positions will be made
• positions expected to start (earlier or later starts may sometimes be possible and should be negotiated with the staff member offering the position).

Depending on availability, PhD positions may sometimes be offered at other times of year, so it helps to check our job vacancies webpage from time to time (positions will also usually be advertised on the AAS Job Register )

Main application requirements

         -you have done some advanced courses,           -your degree also includes a significant research project (at least several months in duration).

Reference letters 

Applicants who have cleared the first screening process will be contacted for references in late November/early December . Prior to hearing if you have been selected to send reference letters, it is not necessary to have them.

Academics  You have or are studying for an advanced (Masters or equivalent) degree in physics, astrophysics or a related subject.  This will usually be a separate Masters degree, carried out after doing a Bachelors degree, but in some cases it may be an enhanced (4 or more years) single degree including standard Bachelor-level and more advanced courses.  You do not need to have obtained your degree to apply: we only require that you obtain the degree before starting your PhD position.

Language English is the main language of our institute, socially, for research, and for teaching. A high level of proficiency in English is mandatory.  Although we do not request formal qualifications in English, we may ask for them to be sure that an applicant’s level of English is sufficient.

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The UvA uses cookies to ensure the basic functionality of the site and for statistical and optimisation purposes. Cookies are also placed to display third-party content and for marketing purposes. Click 'Accept all cookies' to consent to the placement of all cookies, or choose 'Decline' to only accept functional and analytical cookies. Also read the UvA Privacy statement .

Becoming a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Humanities

• PhD candidates employed by the Faculty of Humanities

Self-funded PhD candidates

Phd candidates employed by the faculty of humanities.

PhD candidates employed by the Faculty of Humanities receive funding from the Faculty or from the inter-faculty research institute ILLC. THese PhDs are a small minority of all the PhD researchers in the Faculty.

Externally Funded PhD candidates

These researchers receive a salary form the Faculty of Humanities and are employed just like the previous group, but their funding derives from external sources like the ERC and NWO.

Vacancies for positions in these two categories are advertised on the UvA vacancies website and/or on the websites of the AIHR research schools  and the ILLC. For more information concerning admission to the ILLC PhD programme please refer to the programme's admissions page .

If you wish to start your PhD as a self-funded candidate (i.e. not employed by the university, not receiving a salary from the Faculty, but maybe with funding from a research institute in your home country), the first thing to do is to choose one of the  AIHR research schools  or institutes that suits your proposed research project.

The next step is to find a potential supervisor affiliated with the selected research school who is willing to supervise your research project. Each research school lists its academic staff on its website. Candidates are required to find their own supervisors, though the coordinator of the chosen research school might be able to assist you with selecting a suitable professor.

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The UvA uses cookies to ensure the basic functionality of the site and for statistical and optimisation purposes. Cookies are also placed to display third-party content and for marketing purposes. Click 'Accept all cookies' to consent to the placement of all cookies, or choose 'Decline' to only accept functional and analytical cookies. Also read the UvA Privacy statement .

How do I find a doctoral position?

Many PhD candidates are employed by the University as doctoral researchers with a view to completing a doctoral programme. Consult the list of vacancies for available doctoral positions.

Obtaining a PhD without an employment contract

It is also possible to obtain a doctorate without being employed by the UvA. Contract PhD candidates are those who have concluded an agreement with the UvA or a third party with a view to obtaining a doctorate. They may be funded by, or given time to pursue their studies by, an employer. Or they may receive a scholarship from the University or from another organisation. In both cases, they themselves are responsible for finding a supervisor.

It is also possible to obtain a doctorate from the UvA as an external PhD candidate. In this case, candidates do not enter into an agreement with a third party and do not receive a salary, but sometimes receive some material and/or financial support.

Specific doctoral programmes

For specific doctoral programmes, consult the website of the relevant research institute or Graduate School.

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The UvA uses cookies to ensure the basic functionality of the site and for statistical and optimisation purposes. Cookies are also placed to display third-party content and for marketing purposes. Click 'Accept all cookies' to consent to the placement of all cookies, or choose 'Decline' to only accept functional and analytical cookies. Also read the UvA Privacy statement .

We are Amsterdam UMC

Vacancies and career opportunities at amsterdam umc, from nurses and doctors to it and technical staff: together we will create the care of tomorrow, current vacancies at amsterdam umc, more information.

PhD at the University of Amsterdam

Contrary to the situation in many other countries, PhD students in the Netherlands become employees of the university. PhDs are usually not required to follow classes and can concentrate on their research project through the 4 year PhD period. However, they are expected to teach as e.g. Teaching Assistants for about 10% of their time. This is often in the form of leading Tutorial or Lab sessions for BSc and MSc students. They will also participate in supervising BSc and MSc thesis research projects.

Requirements to enter a PhD

In order to enter the PhD program at GRAPPA, applicants will have to have completed an MSc in Physics and/or Astronomy or a closely related field at a recognized university. A good command of English is also required and computing skills are typically also strongly desired. Depending on the opening, additional competences may be necessary.

Employment Details

PhDs have an employment contract with the University of Amsterdam. They obtain a temporary contract for 38 hours a week for a duration of 4 years. The Initial appointment will be for a period of 18 months and after a satisfactory evaluation it can be extended for a total duration of 4 years. The employment should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. We also expect you to assist in teaching undergraduates and master students.

The salary, depending on relevant experience before the beginning of the employment contract, will be €2.325 to €2.972 (scale P) gross per month in 2020, based on fulltime employment (38 hours a week), exclusive of an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus. A favorable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

For more information please refer to University of Amsterdam website .

Nikhef's PhD vacancies are advertized at  https://www.nikhef.nl/en/vacancies/ .

Doctoral school

The phases of a phd trajectory, search in all subjects.

The Amsterdam UMC Doctoral School supports PhD Candidates and their supervisors by information provision, administration, advice and education.

Our course program helps PhD candidates in conducting independent, original and scientifically significant research, and critically evaluating their own work and that of others.

Would you like to know more about your rights as a PhD Candidate at VU Amsterdam? Join the II Edition of the Know Your Rights workshop of the VU PhD Council!

“No more PDF file, hidden on the research website”. The renewed Amsterdam UMC Research Code is now webbased, and replaces the old PDF version. The code is fully updated and aligned with the harmonization of Amsterdam UMC.

Peer to peer group coaching (in Dutch, intervisie) is experience driven. The content of the meetings is determined by the participating PhD candidates themselves and therefore has relevance for daily practice and needs of PhD candidates.

Have you recently started working in the organization and would you like to learn more about the Doctoral School and your PhD, your stay in The Netherlands and your employment conditions? Then this event is for you! Sign up before February 15th!

Are you starting with teaching, or do you want to get support and guidance in your role as teacher. This course will give you the basic tools and a head start in your teaching process.

ASAP is the Association of Amsterdam UMC PhD candidates. Founded in 2021, ASAP strives to offer a professional and social network for PhD candidates at Amsterdam UMC and its affiliated centers.

A collection of links to websites that may be of interest for PhD candidates.

Get in contact with the Doctoral School

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Two PhD Positions on Human-aligned Video-AI

Job Information

Offer description.

Are you interested in performing high-impact interdisciplinary research in Artificial Intelligence and its alignment with humans and society? The University of Amsterdam has recently started a flagship project on Human-Aligned Video AI (HAVA). The HAVA Lab will address fundamental questions about what defines human alignment with video AI, how to make this computable, and what determines its societal acceptance. Video AI holds the promise to explore what is unreachable, monitor what is imperceivable and to protect what is most valuable. New species have become identifiable in our deep oceans, the visually impaired profit from automated speech transcriptions of visual scenery, and elderly caregivers may be supported with an extra pair of eyes, to name just three of the many, many application examples. This is no longer wishful thinking. Broad uptake of video-AI for science, for business, and for wellbeing awaits at the horizon, thanks to a decade of phenomenal progress in machine deep learning. However, the same video-AI is also accountable for self-driving cars crashing into pedestrians, deep fakes that make us believe misinformation, and mass-surveillance systems that monitor our behaviour. The research community’s over-concentration on recognition accuracy has neglected human-alignment for societal acceptance. The HAVA Lab is an intern-disciplinary lab that will study how to make the much-needed digital transformation towards human-aligned video AI. The HAVA Lab will host 7 PhD positions working together with researchers from all 7 faculties of the university, from video AI and its alignment with human cognition, ethics, and law, to its embedding in medical domains, public safety, and business. The lab has 9 supervisors in total spanning all 7 faculties of the university for maximum interdisciplinarity. Depending on the specific topic, the PhD students also have a strong link to the working environment and faculty of their respective supervisors. The HAVA Lab has been given a unique central location at the library, an ideal hub for interdisciplinary collaborations. The PI of the lab is prof. dr. Cees Snoek. Five of the seven PhD positions have been filled, we are looking to fill two more PhD positions, with the following interdisciplinary focus:

• One PhD Position on human-aligned video-AI for public safety, which will be supervised by prof. dr. Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard and prof. dr. Cees Snoek.
• One PhD Position on human-aligned video-AI for surgical skills, which will be supervised by prof. dr. Marlies Schijven and prof. dr. Cees Snoek.

What are you going to do? Foundational video AI requires self-supervised multimodal learning that models motion dynamics, audio perception and contextual semantics, while reducing the associated computational costs. Furthermore, a good video AI model requires having enhanced generalization capability such that it can be adapted via prompt learning or instruction tuning to various downstream application domains in a parameter-efficient fashion. This is especially important for video understanding applications, where annotating large amounts of data is extremely expensive, error-prone and sensitive to annotator bias, or simply only available in limited amounts due to privacy or societal concerns. However, most current works in video self-supervised learning do not consider these more human-aligned conditions. For both PhD positions, you will research video AI in a human-aligned manner, with one position focusing on public safety and the other one on surgical skills. Public safety. Video AI has the potential to detect unsafe behavior and situations from camera recordings and provide unique insights, for example statistics on crimes that are currently undetected, unregistered and unreported, or on incidences of self-policing and helping. However, specialist knowledge about behavior during subtle incidences of such interactions is needed to deal with human biases present in existing data. This requires new video-AI algorithms recognizing subtle and fine-grained behavior without perpetuating unwanted biases, as well as research into the societal integration of such algorithms. Surgical skills. For this position, you will research how video AI can be developed and safeguarded against annotation biases; and how to align complex annotations with video data when it comes to deployment in settings developed for assessing surgical skills. Moreover, you will investigate how multimodal video-AI algorithms can be developed in an ethically sound manner, and further trained to reliably assess surgical trainees in skills settings. Your tasks will be to:

• Perform novel research towards video AI and its human-alignment in society.
• Actively collaborate within the interdisciplinary HAVA Lab.
• Present research results at international conferences and journals.
• Be active in sharing your research in the public as well as in the social domain, according to UvA Guidelines.
• Assist in teaching activities such as lab assistance and student supervision.
• Pursue and complete a PhD thesis within the appointed duration of four years.

What do you have to offer?

• A relevant Masters degree to the PhD topic of interest. Our ideal PhD candidate has a background in artificial intelligence and affinity with either the social and behavioural sciences or medical sciences.
• Affinity with interdisciplinary research in Artificial Intelligence.
• Interest in developing skills required in complementary disciplines.
• Experience with programming in Python, computer vision and machine learning.
• You are highly motivated, independent, and creative.
• Strong communication, presentation and writing skills and excellent command of English.

Our offer A temporary contract for 38 hours per week for the duration of 4 years (the initial contract will be for a period of 18 months and after satisfactory evaluation it will be extended for a total duration of 4 years). The preferred starting date is as soon as possible. This should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. We also expect you to assist in teaching undergraduates and master students. The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 2,770 in the first year to € 3,539 in the last year (scale P). UvA additionally offers an extensive package of secondary benefits, including 8% holiday allowance and a year-end bonus of 8.3%. The UFO profile PhD Candidate is applicable. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands is applicable. Besides the salary and a vibrant and challenging environment we offer you multiple fringe benefits:

• 232 holiday hours per year (based on fulltime) and extra holidays between Christmas and 1 January;
• Multiple courses to follow from our Teaching and Learning Centre;
• A complete educational program for PhD students;
• Multiple courses on topics such as time management, handling stress and an online learning platform with 100+ different courses;
• 7 weeks birth leave (partner leave) with 100% salary;
• Partly paid parental leave;
• The possibility to set up a workplace at home;
• A pension at ABP for which UvA pays two third part of the contribution;
• The possibility to follow courses to learn Dutch;
• Help with housing for a studio or small apartment when you’re moving from abroad

Are you curious to read more about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits, take a look here . About us The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is the Netherlands' largest university, offering the widest range of academic programmes. At the UvA, 42,000 students, 6,000 staff members and 3,000 PhD candidates study and work in a diverse range of fields, connected by a culture of curiosity. The Faculty of Science (FNWI) has a student body of around 8,000, as well as 1,800 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain. The mission of the Informatics Institute (IvI) is to perform curiosity-driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The main research themes are Artificial Intelligence, Computational Science and Systems and Network Engineering. Our research involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on collaborative, data driven, computational and intelligent systems, all with a strong interactive component. The HAVA Lab is part of the Data Science Centre , the coordinating hub and facilitator for data-driven research within the University of Amsterdam. The supervisors span all 7 faculties of the university. Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about

Requirements

Additional information, work location(s), where to apply.

PhD Student Position in Robot Learning and Representation Learning

• Nieuwe Universiteitsgebouw (NU)
• Closes on 30-06-2024
• Faculty of Science