Tag: Netherlands

NIAS Safe Haven Fellowships 2026-27 (Netherlands)

FellowshipsSafe Haven Fellowships, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 31 December 2025.

The NIAS Safe Haven Fellowship supports scholars at risk. The NIAS Safe Haven Fellowship is intended for scholars, artists, writers and journalists who are not able to do their work in their current location or circumstances, because of the consequences of conflict or war. The aim of the Safe Haven Fellowship Programme is to protect scholars whose work is restricted or obstructed by state or non-state entities, by offering them temporary relocation and enabling them to continue their work. Those who are facing severe infringements on their academic freedoms due to conflict or war are also welcome to apply. NIAS does not accept applicants affiliated to institutions that are boycotted by the Dutch state. Since February 2025, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Maastricht University (UM) are official partners of this programme.

A Safe Haven Fellowship is granted for a period of 5 months (Sept-Jan or Feb–June). Fellows are provided with an office, research facilities, communal lunch, participation in the NIAS community and commuting travel expenses or subsidized accommodation in Amsterdam. Fellows receive a stipend of of €3,500 per month.

On the date of your application, applicants must have at least three years of research experience since obtaining their doctorate if submitting a scientific proposal. In the case of an artistic or journalistic research proposal, a PhD or three years of research experience is not mandatory.

The project proposal must fit within the scope of humanities and/or social sciences.

The working language at NIAS is English. Applicants must have a good command of English to contribute effectively to the fellows group and receive input on their own research.

Utrecht U: Studentship: Recognizing Multicultural Strengths of Youth via Social Networks at Work (Netherlands)

“Studentships“PhD Studentship: Recognizing Multicultural Strengths of Youth via Social Networks at Work, Utrecht University, Netherlands. Deadline: 17 August 2025.

The Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences is looking for a PhD candidate to study social and psychological factors that influence youths’ transition to the labor market.

In the Netherlands, adolescents with a migration background are less likely to find (adequate) internships and first-time jobs compared to their peers without a migration background. To date, research primarily tends to focus on how a multicultural background can lead to difficulties when entering the labor market, including more discrimination, less social support, and fewer relevant working experiences compared to monocultural peers. In the current project, we take a novel approach by examining the recognition of beneficial strengths that adolescents with a migration background may bring to the labor market.

People growing up in difficult conditions develop enhanced abilities, not despite, but precisely because of their challenging experiences. Research suggests that by navigating and negotiating diverse cultural contexts, multicultural individuals can gain rich knowledge and valuable skills (e.g., perspective taking, flexibility, creativity) that can benefit youth in their internships and jobs. Yet, how does the recognition of multicultural strengths emerge among migrant youth? Do employers also recognize and value such multicultural strength among migrant youth? And can the recognition of multicultural strengths be leveraged by both youth and employers to increase chances on the labor market?

This PhD project consists of two research objectives.

Objective 1: examining how social networks contribute to the recognition of multicultural strengths in multicultural youth and potential employers. Social networks refer to the web of social relationships individuals are embedded in, such as connections with friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances. These networks are not merely sources of emotional support but play a central role in influencing attitudes and perceptions, as well as migrants’ chances on the labor market. You will collect ego-centric network data using a novel visualized network-data collection tool specifically designed to survey complex personal networks.

Objective 2: examining the effect of recognizing multicultural strengths among multicultural youth and potential employers on the labor market integration of multicultural youth. You will design experiments to test the direct influence of a) adolescents’ recognition of their multicultural strengths on job-related emotion, motivation and behavior and b) employers’ recognition of multicultural strengths on job applications from multicultural youth.

The project will be supervised by Verena Seibel (Interdisciplinary Social Science), Sheida Novin (Development Psychology), and Tobias Stark (Interdisciplinary Social Science), an interdisciplinary team, combining insights from sociology, developmental psychology, and social psychology.

Maastricht U: PhD Studentship in Sustaining Borders and Displacement Through Refugee Entrepreneurship (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Sustaining Borders and Displacement Through Refugee Entrepreneurship Ph.D. Studentship, Maastricht University, Netherlands. Deadline: 31 August 2025.

The Department of Society Studies is looking for a PhD candidate to undertake in-depth ethnographic research on the bordering practices in entrepreneurship and other life-sustaining programs for refugees in protracted situations in the Global South. You will be part of the Globalisation, Transnational, and Development research group at Maastricht University.

For many refugees, sustaining life is a catch-22. On one hand, refugees living indefinite periods of displacement are often perceived as a burden to their countries of asylum. On the other hand, they are restricted from and can be punished for obtaining employment or other sources of livelihood that would allow them to become self-reliant. ‘Durable solutions’ to manage refugees’ return, local integration, or resettlement continue to be unattainable for the majority of the world’s refugee population. Institutions such as UNHCR and other state and non-state actors have turned towards more ‘comprehensive solutions’ that promote refugees’ self-reliance and economic inclusion in the society in which they live. This research aims to critically investigate how such programmes, in the form of entrepreneurship training and other youth employment initiatives designed to help refugees autonomously navigate the informal urban economies in the ‘Global South’, may also entail bordering practices that shape refugees’ continued experiences of displacement.

The PhD candidate will investigate entrepreneurship programmes and other initiatives that promote refugees’ self-reliance while living indefinite periods of displacement. These initiatives often target young refugees, which make up the majority of refugees, and are promoted as opportunities for refugees to learn new skills, widen networks, and improve future prospects after resettlement, despite declining opportunities for resettlement. The PhD candidate will get an opportunity to develop and undergo in-depth ethnographic research in a refugee asylum country in the Global South, preferably in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. The research will engage with the following critical perspectives:

  1. A youth-centric perspective to understand how refugee entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes shape the experiences of young refugees, surviving and thriving amidst the fraught realities they face during displacement.
  2. An urban-refugee perspective to understand how refugee entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes are designed and implemented by state and non-state actors that support refugees in finding opportunities in the underregulated informal urban economies where they live.
  3. A border-making perspective to understand how refugee entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes are potentially used as border governing structures by state and non-state actors to keep refugees in protracted situations while not according them status.

The research project will be based on multi-scalar ethnographic research comparing different types of entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes in the PhD candidate’s chosen case study country. It will explore how these programmes are experienced by the refugees that participate in them, the trainers that are involved in designing and delivering the programmes, and the international organisations that fund them.

U Leiden: PhD Studentships in Interpersonal Conflicts & Violence (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Interpersonal Conflicts and Violence, 3 Ph.D. Studentships, University of Leiden, Netherlands. Deadline: 18 July 2025

(If the topic interests you, but you already have a PHD, there is also a postdoctoral researcher position available with the same team.)

Why and how do interpersonal conflicts turn physically violent? What are the turning points towards the beginning and ending of violence in encounters between civilians and between police and civilians? If you want to work on these questions, have a master’s degree in communication science, social science, or psychology, and would like to conduct qualitative video analysis, this may be the position for you.

The main aim of this ERC TURNING VIOLENT research is to identify turning points towards one-sided violence in interpersonal conflicts. Projects will focus on conflicts between civilians or between police and civilians in Berlin, Paris, or London. The team will be using publicly available video data, complemented with video elicitation interviews. They are seeking candidates who are interested in learning or who are already experienced in video based ethnomethodological conversation analysis and multimodal analysis and who are comfortable working with qualitative research methods and video annotation tools (e.g. ELAN, NVivo, or similar).

Erasmus U Rotterdam: PhD Studentship in Doing Diversity (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Doing Diversity: Street-level decisions in super diverse neighborhoods Ph.D. Studentship, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 31 July 2025.

New levels of migration and mobility have changed the face of European cities, such as Malmö. This had led to changing ‘superdiverse’ social realities, especially in ‘majority-minority’ neighbourhoods. The novelty of this emerging situation creates challenging circumstances particularly for ‘street-level workers’ such as teachers, police officers and healthcare professionals. This demands renewed understanding of the decision-making process of street-level workers.

This PhD project ‘ICONIC’ (‘International Comparative research Of street-level decisions in superdiverse Neighbourhoods In Context’) funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO Vidi grant) and led by dr. Mark van Ostaijen, will comparatively study street-level decisions in superdiverse neighbourhoods and investigate whether and why these decisions differ between Malmö, Aarhus, Bilbao, Marseille, Rotterdam and Antwerp.

This 4-year PhD project is grounded in Rotterdam, but in strong collaboration with Malmö University. Therefore, you will be based at Erasmus University Rotterdam but for the fieldwork phase, collaboration is ensured with Malmö Institute for Migration Studies (MIM) which provides with the support base to conduct qualitative fieldwork in Malmö and Aarhus. As such, this PhD project does not require additional funding, nor means to conduct fieldwork, which is all covered by project funding.

Next to qualitative and ethnographic research skills it is important that the PhD candidate holds Swedish, English (and Danish) language skills.

A second studentship is available for the same project, but with fieldwork in Bilbao and Marseille. In that case, it is important that the PhD candidate holds Spanish (Basque), English (and French) language skills.

NIAS-Lorentz Theme-Group Fellowships 2026-27 (Netherlands)

FellowshipsNIAS-Lorentz Theme-Group Fellowships, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 1 September 2025.

A NIAS-Lorentz Theme Group (NLTG) is an international team of three researchers, including a coordinator, who come together for a five-month period at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) to pursue collaborative, interdisciplinary research.

The group conducts cutting-edge work that bridges the divide between the humanities and/or social sciences and the natural and/or technological sciences. Their collaboration often results in concrete outputs such as an edited volume, scientific publication, or a proposal for external funding (e.g. ERC).

The NLTG is particularly intended for early to mid-career researchers who wish to explore and establish new interdisciplinary fields of research through close interaction with colleagues from other academic disciplines.

Team Format: A group of three researchers (including the coordinator), working together for five consecutive months at NIAS in Amsterdam.

Timing: The NLTG takes place in the second semester of the academic year 2026 – 2027 (February–June 2027).

U Groningen: PHD Studentship in Mediatizing the Homeland (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Mediatizing the Homeland: Diasporic Imaginaries of Palestine Ph.D. Studentship, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands. Deadline: 30 April 2025.

Fully funded four-year PhD position for the project Mediatizing the Homeland, positioned at the intersection of digital media, decolonial and diaspora studies. As a candidate, you will part of the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, engaging with a thriving community of scholars at the forefront of critical media research. This PhD project offers a unique opportunity to work in an international environment and to acquire valuable research experience at a top-ranked European university. As a PhD student, you will develop your own research project in consultation with the associated supervisors. You will conduct independent and original academic research and report results via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and ultimately a PhD dissertation. The PhD thesis has to be completed within four years. You will also have the opportunity to (further) develop your teaching skills.

This PhD project explores how diasporic identity and belonging are shaped through mediated imaginaries of the homeland. Focusing on the Palestinian diaspora as a case study, it examines how the homeland is discursively and visually constructed across various media forms, particularly as a space that remains largely inaccessible due to geopolitical constraints. More specifically, it investigates how Palestinian diasporic media production, content, and consumption contribute to identity formation and a sense of belonging in response to contemporary regional developments.

The project is guided by the central research question “How do Palestinian participatory media producers, content, and consumers construct diasporic identities and imaginaries of the homeland?” Instead of focusing on traditional media such as literature and cinema, this study looks at participatory media, such as social media, music and videogames. The aim is to inquire into how these media provide diasporic voices with new modes of expression, engagement, and identity negotiation, facilitated by their accessibility, platformization, and the blurring of production and consumption.

Depolarizing Dialogue (Netherlands)

EventsDePolarizing Dialogue. Speaker: Maja Nenadovic, Institute for Developing Across Differences, University of Groningen, Netherlands, 7-8 July 2025. Registration deadline: 3 May 2025.

DePolarizing Dialogue workshop with Maja NenadovicEveryday interactions increasingly provoke angry divisiveness , making civil discussion and respectful disagreements seemingly a thing of the past. Addresses the pressing issue of divisive rhetoric and polarized encounters in Europe and beyond – whether about the pandemic and self-expression, freedom of expression versus hurtful rhetoric, or otherwise.

Register for this workshop to help yourself and those you work with:
1. “Dial down” intense verbal encounters.
2. Diagnose communication problems in real time.
3. Apply “on the spot” strategies to transform polarizing interactions.

CFP ELAN: Linguistic Anthropology in Europe: Past, Present, Futures (Netherlands)

ConferencesCall for papers, inaugural ELAN conference: Linguistic Anthropology in Europe: Past, Present, Futures, Leiden University, 6-7 November 2025. Deadline: 15 May 2025, extended to 1 June 2025.

The goal of this first conference of ELAN, the Linguistic Anthropology Network of EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists), is to bring together a wide range of scholars interested in doing and defining linguistic anthropology in the European context, whether Europe is their fieldsite, institutional base, or European scholars are simply key interlocutors.

In this conference, organizers invite linguistic anthropologists, broadly defined, to come together to explore the range of theoretical and methodological approaches that have composed and now compose linguistic anthropological scholarship in Europe and to imagine future possibilities and directions for carrying out linguistic anthropological research in and on Europe. They welcome papers, panels, and roundtables that showcase scholars’ own linguistic anthropological scholarship, examine intersections and dialogues between different theoretical traditions, and/or reflect on the past, present and future of linguistic anthropology in Europe.

U Amsterdam: Studentship in Argumentation, Identity and the Public Sphere (Netherlands)

“Studentships“

PhD Studentship in Argumentation, Identity and the Public Sphere, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 14 April 2025.

The Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC) currently has a vacant PhD position as part of the project Expressing Identity in Public Discourse through Argumentation led by principal investigator Dr. M.H. (Menno) Reijven. The ACLC prioritises diversity (taken in a holistic sense, e.g., ethnicity, social and/or linguistic background, gender, sexuality) and is committed to creating an inclusive research environment. They are seeking a talented colleague who can communicate well with the different ACLC research groups, develop interdisciplinary projects, and contribute to research-based teaching. The ACLC is one of the five Research Schools within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR). Researchers in the capacity group of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the ACLC investigate argumentative discourse across a wide variety of contexts, as well as the linguistic and cognitive processes behind argumentation and persuasion. The PhD student is expected to collaborate with other researchers on argumentation within the research school as well.