PhD in Welfare State Transformation Age of Artificial Intelligence

This fully funded four-year PhD position is part of an ERC Starting Grant ‘(Re) distributive Politics after the AI Revolution (REPAIR)’ funded by the European Research Council and led by Dr. Juliana Chueri at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The broader ERC project examines how welfare state institutions and welfare politics shape political and societal responses to AI-driven labor market transformation across OECD countries. Moving beyond techno-deterministic perspectives, the project emphasizes the active role of political institutions, policies, and collective choices in shaping how AI affects work, employment, and social protection.

The project is structured around four interlinked objectives:

The PhD project will primarily contribute to Objectives 1 and 4, with a focus on welfare state institutions, labor market regulation, and long-term transformation of the welfare state.

Adopting a forward-looking perspective, your research will examine how welfare states adapt to labor market transformations driven by AI. This research will enable both empirical analysis and theoretical development of context-specific pathways of welfare state transition in an emerging AI society.

Specifically, the PhD research will analyze how welfare state and labor market institutions mediate countries’ social exposure to AI-driven automation. This includes examining how institutions may:

• shape firms’ incentives to adopt labor-replacing technologies
• mitigate social risks for workers displaced by automation
• support reskilling, retraining, and labor market transitions
• and condition longer-term pathways of welfare state recalibration and transformation

The project will involve the development of comparative indicators or typologies of countries, combined with in-depth institutional analysis. Methodologically, the PhD project will employ a mixed-methods approach, combining comparative institutional analysis, quantitative cross-national data analysis, and qualitative case studies.

As a PhD candidate, you will complete a cumulative PhD dissertation within four years, consisting of four publishable journal articles. Working closely with your supervisory team, led by Dr. Juliana Chueri, and in collaboration with the ERC research team, which includes another PhD candidate and a postdoctoral researcher, you will play an integral role in advancing Objectives 1 and 4 of the ERC project.

As part of your PhD, you will contribute to the development of an international comparative database capturing countries’ social exposure to AI-driven labor market change. You will conduct quantitative cross-national analyses using this dataset to construct a typology of welfare states and to identify ideal-type cases for in-depth institutional analysis.

You will actively participate in the intellectual life of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, present your work at international conferences and workshops, contribute to collaborative research activities within the project, and have the opportunity to undertake research stays abroad within the project’s international network of collaborators.