Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology

As an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology, you will teach students and conduct research, both within the field of Clinical Psychology. Your academic profile aligns with the mission and vision of the Clinical Psychology department (https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/clinical-psychology/mission-vision-and-strategy).

With respect to teaching, you will teach in the Dutch Bachelor’s programme in Psychology in the domains relevant to Clinical Psychology and the international Master’s programme in Clinical Psychology. Teaching involves (large-scale) lectures, (small-scale) instruction and individual supervision of clinical or research internships and research theses, along with more general coordination and administration activities.

With respect to research, your past and intended future research should align with the broader domain of clinical psychological science and contribute to advancing knowledge of the nature, prevalence, underlying individual and interpersonal etiological or maintaining mechanisms, and prevention and treatment of common mental health disorders and/or trauma- and stressor-related disorders. Your research should combine methodological rigor with societal relevance, preferably in close collaboration with mental health care institutions and involving clinical populations.

You are motivated to mentor and support early-career researchers in their scientific and professional development.

We place great importance on collaboration, open knowledge exchange, and a collegial atmosphere within the department. We are looking for team players who work well independently while also contributing actively to shared goals and a positive work environment.

The core tasks include:

• Participating in teaching at a bachelor’s and master’s level. Teaching involves individual supervision; lectures and workgroups in clinically oriented courses;
• Coordination of parts of the curriculum;
• Participating in research on mechanisms, prevention, and treatment of common mental health disorders and/or trauma- and stressor-related disorders;
• Publishing research findings in international scientific journals;
• Contributing to the acquisition of external research funding for the benefit of the research programme;
• Contributing to collaboration, and a collegial atmosphere within the department;
• Mentor and support the scientific and professional development of early-career researchers.

For our education and research programs, experience with treating patients is desirable. This job position is open to those with a research orientation, as well as those who are more clinically oriented.

PhD Computational Semantic Representations: a Multilingual Language-Change Study

The Department of Methodology & Statistics at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences has a job opening for PhD candidate. In the position of PhD candidate, you are responsible for conducting original research on computational models of semantic change and synonymy evolution across historical corpora, structured around three lines of work: (1) modelling semantic relationships across time; (2) interpretability of semantic change models; and (3) generalization across languages and domains. You will carry out activities like developing, benchmarking, and refining NLP pipelines, analysing multilingual historical datasets, and disseminating your findings through publications and presentations.

Your main tasks and responsibilities include:

• Designing, implementing, and evaluating computational models using contextualized word embeddings and LLMs to track semantic change and synonymy evolution across time.
• developing hierarchical clustering architectures to identify and track polysemous senses in historical corpora.
• applying the framework to English (COCA/COHA), Dutch (Delpher), and Spanish (RAE) data to automatically detect synonyms and measure semantic trajectories.
• building and maintaining an open-source pipeline for the broader language change research community.
• investigating whether observed evolutionary tendencies are universal or language specific.
• contributing to the intersection of computational linguistics and the Social and Behavioural Sciences through interdisciplinary collaboration.
• writing and publishing scientific articles in international journals and presenting at conferences.
• participating in the academic community of the Department and the research group, including seminars and workshops.
• contributing to teaching or departmental tasks for up to 10% of your appointment.

PhD Mental Imagery in Mood Disorders: Cognitive Mechanisms and Implications

Compared with verbal thoughts, mental images evoke stronger emotional responses and may increase vulnerability to emotional distress.

Intrusive mental imagery has therefore emerged as an important transdiagnostic factor across psychological disorders. However, it remains unclear which characteristics of intrusive mental imagery (e.g. vividness, emotional intensity and perceived uncontrollability) are most clinically relevant and through which cognitive mechanisms they contribute to emotional distress and the persistence of mood disorders.

The overall aim of this project is to improve our understanding of the characteristics and cognitive mechanisms underlying intrusive mental imagery and to translate these insights into more targeted imagery-based psychological interventions.

Planned studies include a scoping review; experimental studies; qualitative interviews; and the development and evaluation of an imagery-based intervention.

Supervision Team
The project will be supervised by Dr. Jaël van Bentum, Prof. Elske Salemink, and Prof. Eline Regeer. The project is embedded in the Department of Clinical Psychology. The candidate will join the Dutch-Flemish Postgraduate School Experimental Psychopathology, which provides additional training and facilitates networking and collaboration with other researchers in the field of Experimental Psychopathology.

Your tasks

• designing and conducting a series of studies (including a scoping review, experimental laboratory research, qualitative interviews and intervention development);
• recruiting participants and coordinating data collection in laboratory and clinical settings;
• analysing quantitative and qualitative data using appropriate research methods;
• publishing your findings in international peer-reviewed journals and presenting your work at national and international conferences;
• collaborating with researchers at Utrecht University and with external clinical partners;
• contributing to teaching activities within the Department of Clinical Psychology (approximately 10% of your appointment).

PhD Improving Carer Support in Eating Disorders

Building on these promising findings, this PhD project will evaluate the effectiveness of the training, examine carers' emotion regulation as a mechanism of change, identify unmet support needs to inform tailored interventions, and investigate the contribution of lived experience expertise using both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Postdoc Position in Clinical Immunopeptidomics and Proteomics

As a Postdoctoral Researcher in the group of dr Marino, you will play a central role in advancing the group's research through the development and application of state-of-the-art immunopeptidomics/proteomics workflows for antigen identification, quantification, and validation. Your work will directly contribute to translational and precision medicine initiatives, with a particular focus on the discovery of clinically relevant targets for cancer immunotherapy.

In this role, you will support the team by driving mass spectrometry-based method development and contributing your expertise to a range of proteogenomics and immunology-related projects. Beyond providing technical leadership, you will proactively introduce innovative ideas, establish new research directions, and spearhead initiatives that strengthen the group's scientific capabilities.

You will have the opportunity to make a significant impact by developing novel workflows that enable the identification, accurate quantification of antigens and associated mechanisms of T-cell recognition. These discoveries will support the development of next-generation vaccine-based therapies, ultimately contributing to improved outcomes for patients with cancer.

Finally, you will be involved in many different multicentered and multidisciplinary collaborations, with both industry as well as academia and medical institutes. This will increase your exposure and expand your own professional network supporting your future scientific career.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and execute mass spectrometry–based workflows for the identification and quantitation of disease-associated antigens from clinical specimens;
• Develop, optimize, and apply DIA- and PRM-based proteomics methods;
• Perform quantitative data analysis, normalization, quality control, and statistical interpretation of proteomics datasets;
• Contribute to biomarker and antigen validation studies across diverse clinical cohorts;
• Collaborate closely with clinicians, computational biologists, and translational researchers;
• Support method development, data interpretation, manuscript preparation, and grant writing.