PhD Position: Intersectionality and Informal Caregiving in Later Life

Do you want to investigate how informal care can remain sustainable in ageing societies? Apply for a PhD position in Sociology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Your function

Population ageing and declining fertility rates pose major challenges for the sustainability and organization of long-term care systems across Europe. In the Netherlands, as in many other countries, policy reforms have increasingly shifted long-term care away from institutional settings toward “ageing in place,” relying heavily on informal care provided by family members, friends, and other close contacts. While this approach allows older adults to remain in familiar environments, it also places growing demands on informal caregivers and raises important questions about inequality in caregiver stress and wellbeing.

Extensive research shows that informal caregiving and its consequences are unequally distributed. Women are more likely to provide care and report higher levels of burden; individuals with a lower socioeconomic position more often provide intensive care and experience heightened stress; and people with a migration background may face particular strains when combining caregiving with work and family responsibilities. However, much remains unknown about how these social categories of inequality intersect.

This PhD project adopts an explicitly intersectional perspective to examine how gender, socioeconomic position, and migration background jointly shape informal caregiving and positive and negative caregiver outcomes.

Methodologically, the project combines quantitative and qualitative approaches and builds on high-quality Dutch data sources. The PhD candidate will conduct multiple empirical studies examining intersections in caregiving participation and outcomes.

We in particular invite candidates who are interested or experienced in intersectional analysis, have an affinity with quantitative research methods, affinity with or an interest in qualitative research methods and are passionate about doing research.

Your tasks

• Gaining in-depth knowledge on theoretical and methodological literature on intersectionality and care
• Designing, together with your supervisors, various components of your research, including literature reviews, data-analysis plans and research papers
• Preparing data from existing population surveys, like the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA)
• Carrying out quantitative statistical and qualitative thematic analyses
• Presenting your research at academic conferences and workshops, and to societal partners
• Publishing in international academic peer reviewed journals and finishing a PhD thesis
• Joining and actively contributing to meetings and gatherings of the Social Context of Aging group at the VU, the LASA research team in the Amsterdam UMC and the Department of Sociology
• Taking relevant courses within and outside the Graduate School for Social Sciences to meet the requirements for obtaining a PhD
• Assisting in teaching in the bachelor program of Sociology (0,10 yearly)

Your profile

This position is a good fit for you if you have:

• A (Research) Master’s degree in Social Sciences, Health Sciences or a related field
• Excellent study results and academic skills
• Solid knowledge of and experience with conducting quantitative research methods and different statistical methods; experience with longitudinal datasets and intersectionality methodology is a plus
• Experience with conducting qualitative research methods is a plus
• Substantive interest in social gerontology and caregiving research
• Previous experience with doing empirical research, during internships, research assistance or junior positions
• Ability to work independently and willingness to collaborate with other team members
• A strong sense of responsibility for scientific integrity
• Excellent command of English (C1). Command of Dutch language is a plus

What do we offer?

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• A salary of € 3.059,00 gross per month (PhD), increasing to a maximum of € 3.881,00 gross per month in the fourth year, based on full-time employment
• An employment contract of initially 1 year; if there is sufficient perspective, this will be extended to a total of 4 years. Your dissertation at the end of the fourth year forms the end of your employment contract

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and arrangements. Some examples:

• A full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• Solid pension scheme (ABP)
• Contribution to commuting expenses
• A wide range of sports facilities which staff may use at a modest charge

About us

About the department

The Department of Sociology is a vibrant and international community of dedicated researchers and teachers specializing in contemporary societal development such as globalization, modernization, individualization, and multiculturalism—and their impact on cohesion, inequality, and identity. It offers Bachelor's, Master's, and Pre-master Sociology programs (in Dutch) and provides methodology courses for other Social Sciences programs. Research focuses on five themes under the Participation in Society (PARIS) program. Both research and education are carried out in collaboration with societal partners to maximize impact.

You will join the research group “Social Context of Aging,” one of the five core research themes within the Department of Sociology. In addition, you will contribute to the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, a multidisciplinary cohort study conducted in close collaboration with Sociology and researchers from the Faculty of Science (Department of Health Sciences) and the Faculty of Medicine (Departments of Epidemiology & Data Science and Psychiatry).