06 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vrije University Amsterdam, Netherlands

We offer an exciting postdoc position in a transdisciplinary research project on sustainable land use strategies. You will first study how values regarding land use change have changed over time through a media analysis. You will conduct behavioural and choice experiments among consumers and citizens in multiple countries through online panels and in lab-settings. This will help identify measures and designing interventions that can stimulate a change towards more sustainable behaviour.

The Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) is the leading knowledge partner of the NWA-ORC funded project ALIGN4energy (A4E) project. A4E is focused on accelerating the energy transition in the residential sector, by combining knowledge and theory from social sciences (psychology, economy, transaction cost theory, political sciences), humanities, and technological science (computer science, energy systems modelling), and stakeholders (e.g., municipalities, housing cooperations). The main outcome of the project will be personalised digital modules to engage citizens in the energy transition.

For this project, IVM is looking for a Postdoc (0.4-0.8 FTE), who will develop and test behavioural interventions that can engage larger groups of citizens with the energy transition. More specifically, we are interested in researching interventions that can attract people to visit – and stay engaged on – online energy platforms. You are also expected to assist the project leader, Dr Sanchayan Banerjee, with teaching (0.2 FTE) and project management duties (0.1 FTE).

Serial Crystallography (SX) is an emerging method that allows visualizing the macromolecule interaction with light. SX is a so-called “pump–probe” experiment, where a short UV-Visible light laser pulse excites the chromophores in the molecule while an X-ray pulse is used to probe the newly formed state at a  certain delay after light excitation. As a result, the light-induced X-ray crystallographic electron densities are assigned to reactions and excited-state processes. Postdoctoral research position in SX and dynamic structural biology is available to study light inducible proteins essential for photosynthesis and photobiology. The SX results would be complemented by time-resolved spectroscopy.The position is available now for a minimum of one year, with the possibility of extension.

This position is supported by an IVM-funded interdisciplinary research project connecting economics and  political science. The key theme of the position are the citizen and expert narratives, i.e., the stories people tell to organize, explain and make sense of the world, of the EU energy crisis of 2022-2023. You will study (1) the narratives EU citizens use to explain the causes of and policy solutions to the energy crisis using a large-N survey with representative samples from the EU-12 countries, (2) the narratives experts use to explain the causes of and policy solutions to the energy crisis using an elite survey with policymakers and academic experts, and (3) the differences between citizens and expert narratives and the role of media using qualitative document analysis. The project coordinators, and your future collaborators, are Dr. Madeline Werthschulte, an economist, and Dr. Mathieu Blondeel, a political scientist.

The oral cavity is the main gate to the rest of the body and comprises a complex ecosystem with a wealth of microbes (bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses and protozoa), which normally are in symbiosis with their host. Environmental factors (e.g. diet high in carbohydrates or poor oral hygiene) drive the emergence of dysbiotic microbial communities, which can contribute to development of oral and even systemic diseases. The Department of Preventive Dentistry is involved in several collaborative research projects where the acquisition and development of the oral microbial ecosystem of children in relation to their oral health is monitored. We are seeking a highly motivated and talented individual who is interested in contributing to our understanding of the complexity of the oral microbial ecosystem in relation to oral health and disease.

Despite robots increasingly entering our work lives, we know surprisingly little about their impact on jobs. Engineers are excited to build intelligent robotic applications with the aim to alleviate difficult, risky, or boring jobs, such as cleaning, bomb diffusion, transportation of goods or surveillance. Labor economists and public commentators, in turn, put forward gloomy scenarios of jobs becoming obsolete, degraded or void of meaning. Currently, however, we lack a rigorous insight into how robots are really used in situated work practice. Without such insight, engineers are in the dark about what impact robots have on work and have few methods of including work context into account when building robotic applications. This NWO-funded Vidi project aims to generate such insight by conducting several ethnographic studies of professional service robots at work.