PhD Position: Health Demography at NIDI-KNAW

This PhD position focuses on health demography within the overarching SEHealth research program, which develops new directions to improving population health by elucidating the origins and accumulation of chronic diseases. This project will focus on living environments and, using population-based data and novel methodology, establish how climate change relates to disease onset, as well as whether green transitions can improve health.

Much of the variation in health is attributable to living environments. The exposome is expected to be important in cardiometabolic health trajectories, including climate risks such as pollutants, extreme temperatures, and access to green spaces. Emerging factors related to climate change and environmental degradation, such as microplastics and organic pollutants, have plausible causal pathways to cardiometabolic diseases and require study. Health-related behaviours connected to climate-related issues may also be important. Adding further complexity, social inequalities in climate- and pollution-related exposures likely contribute to inequalities in health.

The PhD scholar will use a newly developed data infrastructure from the SoGreen Project, with population-representative major European datasets (eg. GGP, SHARE, ESS, Lifelines). The project will leverage health indicators across the lifespan, geo-spatial data on climate, and individual engagement with green transitions behaviours.

What you will be doing

In this four year project, you will:

• Carry out cutting-edge academic research within an international team of researchers.
• Publish national and international journal articles, resulting in a PhD thesis.
• Participate in, and present at (inter-)national scientific meetings.
• Contribute to the project, including dissemination and communication activities aimed at policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public.

What you will be contributing

We are looking for a PhD candidate with strong quantitative research skills, experience working with large datasets, and a passion for demography. The candidate should have received a Research Masters degree in demography, sociology, economics, geography, epidemiology and should have very strong written and oral scientific English proficiency. Intellectual curiosity, engagement with research questions, creativity, and analytical rigor are central. Candidates with skills in advanced statistical methods and programming (e.g., Stata or R), experience working with longitudinal and survey data are preferred.

What do we offer?

We offer a 1-year contract which will be extended by 3 additional years after a positive evaluation. The PhD position offers close supervision, excellent training opportunities, and a solid foundation for an academic or research-oriented career.

Your workplace

The work climate is based on mutual respect, openness, and collaboration. The institute consists of about 80 employees of different levels of seniority.

NIDI comprises five thematic groups: (1) Families & gender, (2) Migrants & migration, (3) Demographic change and the labour market, (4) Health, ageing and mortality, (5) Data infrastructure and open science. Each group has approximately 10-15 members.

About NIDI

The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) is a leading European demographic research institute. NIDI is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and affiliated with the University of Groningen. It is located in the center of The Hague, providing a unique and stimulating research environment in the broad field of population studies. The working environment is highly international and NIDI provides ample opportunities for training and development.