Postdoctoral Researcher - GRAPHIA Project (Generations and Gender Programme - NIDI-KNAW - The Hague)

The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) invites applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher position within the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) as part of the GRAPHIA project. This project contributes to the development of a Social Sciences and Humanities Knowledge Graph and AI-powered tools that improve how research data is found, connected, and used. The position focuses on integrating and interpreting cross-national survey data within this emerging technological framework.

Introduction / project description:
The GGP is a cross-national research infrastructure that provides high-quality, open-access data on population and family dynamics. Its core component is the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), a longitudinal study on life courses and family structures across countries.

The GGP Central Coordination Team is located at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague and is responsible for the coordination, data processing, and scientific support of the programme.

This position is part of the EU-funded GRAPHIA project in which the GGP participates. The aim of GRAPHIA is to transform social science and humanities data into a more machine-readable and actionable format, significantly improving SSH data visualisation and analysis capacities. Within this project, GGP contributes domain expertise, data integration, and user-oriented development. In particular the aim is to test the integration of the GGP data and metadata into the GRAPHIA knowledge graph.

What you will be doing:
As a Postdoctoral Researcher, you will work at the intersection of survey data, research infrastructure, and emerging technologies. You will contribute to GGP’s role in the GRAPHIA project while supporting the activities of the GGP Central Hub.
You will:

• Support the selection and use of GGP datasets, documentation, and related materials for GRAPHIA activities;
• Help ensure that GGP data is correctly understood and used within GRAPHIA project workflows;
• Contribute to the development, testing, and evaluation of use cases, pilots, and demonstrators;
• Participate in GRAPHIA project meetings and follow developments across work packages;
• Support the day-to-day operations of the GGP Central Hub where needed.

What you will be contributing:

• Hold a PhD in Sociology, Demography, or a related social science (or have equivalent experience);
• Have experience with survey research, longitudinal data, or population studies;
• Are able to interpret and communicate research data to different audiences;
• Are curious about how research data can be structured, connected, and made more accessible (for example through metadata, knowledge graphs, or AI tools);
• Are motivated to work at the interface of social science and data technologies;
• Are well-organised, detail-oriented, and able to manage multiple tasks;
• Have excellent communication skills in English (written and spoken);
• Enjoy working in an international and collaborative environment.

What do we offer?
We offer a postdoctoral researcher position at the heart of an internationally connected research infrastructure. As part of the GGP Central Hub and the GRAPHIA project, you will contribute to work that directly shapes how survey data is found, interpreted, and used across disciplines and countries.
You will work at the intersection of social science data and emerging technologies – including AI and knowledge graphs – and gain hands-on experience in a collaborative European research project. The role offers exposure to a wide range of activities, from data documentation and quality assurance to user-facing pilots and dissemination.
The initial appointment will be until 31.12.2027. Any extension will be contingent on performance, availability of funds, and the human resource needs of the infrastructure. Dutch law stipulates a maximum of 4 years in total for a temporary research-based contract.

Dissemination Officer - Generations and Gender Programme - NIDI-KNAW - The Hague

The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) invites applications for a Dissemination Officer position within the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP). This new position will help us promote the use and understanding of cross-national survey data to a wide range of stakeholders, including how the GGP data is found, connected, and used.

Introduction / project description:
The GGP is a cross-national research infrastructure that provides high-quality, open-access data on population and family dynamics. Its core component is the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), a longitudinal study on life courses and family structures across countries.

The GGP Central Coordination Team is located at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague and is responsible for the coordination, data processing, and scientific support of the programme.

What you will be doing:
As a Dissemination Officer, you will work at the intersection of survey data, research infrastructure, and emerging technologies. You will contribute to GGP’s role while supporting the communication and outreach activities of the GGP Central Hub.

You will:

• Support the visibility, accessibility, and effective use of GGP datasets, documentation, and related materials;
• Help ensure that GGP data is clearly communicated and correctly understood by diverse user communities;
• Update website content and publish news items to highlight project activities and results;
• Prepare and distribute newsletters and support social media communication (e.g. LinkedIn);
• Assist in the preparation of dissemination materials and maintain dissemination records and documentation;
• Support communication related to events, workshops, and project updates;
• Participate in project meetings;
• Contribute to the day-to-day communication and operational activities of the GGP Central Hub.

What do we offer?
We offer a junior researcher position at the heart of an internationally connected research infrastructure. As part of the GGP Central Hub, you will contribute to work that directly shapes how survey data is found, interpreted, and used across disciplines and countries.
You will work at the intersection of social science data and emerging technologies – including AI and knowledge graphs – and gain hands-on experience in a collaborative European research project. The role offers exposure to a wide range of activities, from data documentation and quality assurance to user-facing pilots and dissemination.
The initial appointment will be until 31.12.2027. Any extension will be contingent on performance, availability of funds, and the human resource needs of the infrastructure. Dutch law stipulates a maximum of 4 years in total for a temporary research-based contract.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Anthropology - Digitalisation in Greenhouse Horticulture - Meertens

The Position

Digital agricultural innovations are often framed by policymakers, international organisations, and private actors as key drivers of sustainable agricultural transitions. This postdoctoral position focuses on the digitalisation of greenhouse horticulture — one of the most contested political and socio-ecological dimensions of contemporary industrial food production. Industrial greenhouse horticulture is heavily concentrated in two key European regions: Westland (the Netherlands) and Almería (Spain), both of which have become focal points of public concern and scientific debate about the future of food, sustainability, and the broader socio-ecological effects of industrial agriculture.

You will investigate the relationship between digitalisation and sustainability within the framework of the EU Green Deal, developing your own empirical case study — in consultation with the PI — to produce an ethnographic account of digitalisation in greenhouse horticulture. The following questions will guide your research: How are greenhouses responding to, or resisting, European sustainability visions and the particular forms of knowledge and practice these entail? What digital systems are being introduced — for automating climate control, recognising pests, guiding harvesting, or codifying 'green knowledge' — and how are the humans working in greenhouses engaging with such systems? What new dependencies, power relations, and subjectivities does digitalisation produce among growers, workers, and other actors? How do specific innovations, such as new LED lighting systems, accommodate or interfere with the lives of insects living and labouring in and around the greenhouse? Crucially, these transformations encumber farmers and workers with new dependencies, socialities, and knowledge systems — and yet their social, political, and more-than-human dimensions remain poorly understood.

You will conduct fieldwork in the Netherlands, Spain, or both countries, depending on your prior research experience. Candidates with previous fieldwork experience in one or both countries are particularly encouraged to consider a comparative approach spanning both sites. Please specify in your problem statement which approach you intend to take, and if you will do fieldwork in Spain, Netherlands or both and how and why.

Your Tasks

• Design and conduct ethnographic fieldwork on a case study surrounding the digitalisation of greenhouse horticulture, including participant observation, interviews, and literature revision;
• Develop your own case study for the work package (WP), in close collaboration with the PI;
• Participate actively in the VITALGREENHOUSE research team, consisting of the PI, one PhD candidate, one Postdoc, and a co-supervisor;
• Publish 2 peer-reviewed articles;
• Provide supervision support to the PhD candidate, particularly during fieldwork;
• Reside in Amsterdam (or within commuting distance) when not conducting fieldwork, and actively participate in team meetings and the research environment at the Institute.

Research Technician Nederlands Herseninstituut

The Netherlands Brain Bank (NBB) is a department of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN). The NBB provides post-mortem human brain tissue obtained from donors to researchers worldwide. The NBB is driven by a dedicated team of 18 employees, and close collaboration with four pathologists and mortuary assistants at the Amsterdam UMC, and with a team of 10 on-call autopsy professionals who perform autopsies during evenings and weekends.

The NBB is also part of the Institute for Chemical Neuroscience (iCNS), a consortium which aims to discover molecular changes in the human brain underlying psychiatric symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Ultimately, the interdisciplinary research from iCNS will lead to a molecular “brain atlas” of psychiatric symptoms and to new leads and approaches to improve the future diagnosis, prognosis and possible treatment of psychiatric disorders.

The NBB provides well-documented human brain tissue to researchers within iCNS. To support this work we are looking for a research technician who will be responsible for cryosectioning tissues from several brain regions for downstream molecular and imaging analyses within the iCNS consortium.

What will you be doing
Your main tasks include; cryosectioning frozen human brain tissue, preparing tissue sections for downstream applications such as molecular analyses and imaging, organizing and storing samples in freezers, recording all tissue handling activities in the tracking database, helping to maintain quality control of tissue processing workflows, assisting with sample shipment processes and assisting with brain dissection and autopsy procedures.

PhD Position: Health Demography at NIDI-KNAW

Over the past century, people around the world have experienced momentous improvements in health and in life expectancy. Whether improvements in health will continue is unclear, however, as several countries have seen plateauing or even declining life expectancy in recent decades. The overarching research program (SEHealth) develops new directions to improving population health by elucidating the origins and accumulation of chronic diseases; this PhD project will focus on living environments. Indeed, much of the variation in health is attributable to living environments. The exposome is expected to be important in cardiometabolic health trajectories include 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 focus of the PhD project will be to establish, using population-based data and novel methodology, how climate change relates to disease onset and whether green transitions can improve 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.