PhD position in Social Science Genetics – VU UMC

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The Doctoral Network

ESSGN brings together eight Universities with a shared interest in social science genetics
, i.e., in incorporating genetic information to improve our understanding of age-old questions in the social sciences, such as the origins of inequality, the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate, and the extent to which the interplay between environments and genes is important in shaping life chances. The consortium consists of an interdisciplinary group of academics, spanning demography, economics, epidemiology, genetics, political science, psychology, sociology, and statistics, as well as seven non-academic partners experienced in and committed to using data science to better understand inequalities in life chances
. The partners include government bodies (GO Science UK), policy research institutes (RAND Europe, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute [NIDI]), charities (the Health Foundation), data infrastructure networks (CentERdata-ODISSEI) as well as economics consulting (Prometeia).

ESSGN creates, nurtures, and maintains a stimulating and world-class training environment in the interdisciplinary study of social-science genetics and geno-economics.
Training will be provided through: i) courses in the biological foundations of genetic inheritance; ii) practical training in cutting-edge, multidisciplinary methods in social science genetics, including in state-of-the-art computational and bioinformatics methods for analysing big data and in statistical techniques for empirical research; and iii) cutting-edge academic research, to prepare the doctoral student to be a successful research scientist, but also for the professional job market in industry, technology and policy.

We will coordinate and support skill development as well as monitor well-being and progress towards the PhD.

The PhD projects will jointly contribute to answering a key research question that has occupied social scientists for decades:

To what extent do inequalities in life chances arise from genetic variation, environmental factors, and their interplay, and what can we do about it?

The PhD project will go beyond the state-of-the-art by (i) using Europe’s largest and most comprehensive multi-generation databases to separate direct genetic effects from parental genetic and socio-economic factors that shape the rearing environment; and (ii) by exploiting the large toolbox of causal inference methods used in econometrics and statistics to estimate how environmental contexts causally protect individuals with genetic risk.

We will incorporate genetic information into the social sciences to explore how genetic and environmental characteristics jointly shape inequalities in life chances by (1) analysing to what extent genetic (‘nature’) and environmental (‘nurture’) factors contribute to inequality of opportunity and intergenerational mobility, and (2) establishing how nature and nurture jointly shape inequalities in life chances.

Applicants for VU Amsterdam can be of any nationality and must not have a doctoral degree at the date of recruitment. They must not have resided or carried out their main activity (study, work, etc.) in the Netherlands for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before the recruitment date.

• Applicants must have obtained (or be about to obtain), an MSc/MRes/MPhil (or equivalent) in an appropriate area of social science (e.g., demography, economics, epidemiology, political science, psychology, sociology, statistics) or medical science (e.g., genetics, epigenetics). We are looking for students with strong quantitative skills. Professional experience is a plus, but not a must.

If you wish to apply you must:

• Comply with the mobility rule
  , meaning that they must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the Netherlands for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date (see below (*) for exceptions to this rule).
• Comply with the doctoral candidate criteria
  , meaning that at the time of recruitment they have not been awarded a doctoral degree.
• Fulfil the requirements to be enrolled in a doctoral programme at…