PhD candidate in Political Science

Background

The Department of Political Science and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Amsterdam and the Prodemos House for Democracy & Rule of Law are looking for a PhD candidate to conduct doctoral research activities within a project that is embedded in an interdisciplinary environment, which also includes scholars from Didactics, Sociology, and Public Administration.

This research project is concerned with the political socialization of adolescents, most notably their development of democratic values such as support for liberal and representative democracy and its institutions, political tolerance, law abidingness, and political efficacy. To what extent, in which contexts, and via which mechanisms do adolescents develop these democratic values over time? And to what extent may civic education programmes in general, and the programme of ProDemos in specific, contribute to this development? This project is thus simultaneously a fundamental study on political socialization and a more policy oriented test of the effects of a specific civic education programme aimed at adolescents.

The research project will cover four aspects:
the crystallization (i.e., the internal coherence) of democratic values among adolescents with age across various contexts;
the macro- and micro-level determinants of democratic values among adolescents of various ages across various contexts;
the effects of peer group composition in classes on adolescents’ democratic values;
the effects of the civic education programmes of ProDemos on adolescents’ democratic values.

This study will make use of an extensive body of quantitative (survey and experimental) data on adolescents’ political attitudes. The project will offer the candidate much leeway to position the dissertation in the wider theoretical and empirical literature on political socialization. The dissertation will take the shape of a collection of research articles submitted to ISI ranked journals, ultimately collected in a coherent dissertation.

Requirements

The PhD candidate should

• have an interest in working on the cross-section between academic and policy research, and the ambition for a career in academia and/or policy;
• be educated in Political Science, Sociology, Didactics, Social Psychology or related disciplines, preferably with a specialization in political behavior and/or (political) socialization. A Research Master education is a pre;
• have demonstrable advanced quantitative and/or mixed methods research skills (such as survey design, multilevel or time series analysis and/or experimentation). Experience in applying such methods for academic of policy research is a pre;
• have competent written and verbal skills in Dutch, for the purpose of setting up surveys, discussing with adolescents, and writing policy briefs in Dutch;
• have competent written and verbal skills in English, for the purpose of writing publications for an international scholarly audience.

Conditions of employment

The PhD-candidate will be employed by Prodemos and work at both institutes, under the supervision of Eddy Habben Jansen at ProDemos and Dr. Tom van der Meer and Dr. Sarah de Lange at the University of Amsterdam.

• Time span: 4 years
• Starting date: between September 2016 and December 2016 (tbd in agreement)

On the basis of a full-time appointment, the gross monthly salary will be €2,174 during the first year, rising to €2,779 during an eventual fourth year, excl. 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end of year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement for Welzijn en Maatschappelijke Dienstverlening is applicable.

Additional information

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