Medewerker studentzaken Psychologie

Samen met negen collega’s ondersteun je de bachelor- en masteropleidingen van het departement Psychologie. Je zorgt ervoor dat onderwijsprocessen goed georganiseerd zijn en zoekt daarbij steeds de juiste weg tussen de wensen van docenten en de opleiding, de mogelijkheden binnen het team en de kaders van de faculteit en universiteit. Als medewerker studentzaken heb je een afwisselend takenpakket. Je krijgt de ruimte om je te verdiepen in specifieke werkzaamheden en mee te denken over verbeteringen in processen en dienstverlening.

Samen met je collega’s:

• behandel je mails van docenten, studenten en studiekiezers;
• stel je roosters op in overleg met docenten en het facultaire roosterbureau;
• ondersteun je bij de organisatie van toetsen, inzagemomenten en cursusevaluaties;
• coördineer je de cursusinschrijving en werkgroepindeling;
• informeer je studenten over onderwijszaken;
• help je bij de organisatie van open dagen, diploma-uitreikingen, de selectie en de INtroductie;
• verzorg je de afgifte van certificaten en registraties zoals de vLOGO;
• houd je de jaarplanning van de verschillende processen in het oog en signaleer je tijdig knelpunten.

Sommige processen kunnen complex zijn en komen maar één keer per jaar voor. Het kan daarom even duren voordat je bent ingewerkt. Wij verwachten daarom niet dat je alles direct weet: nieuwsgierigheid, leergierigheid en de bereidheid om vragen te stellen vinden wij belangrijker.

Het Onderwijsondersteuningsteam Psychologie bestaat uit een aantal vaste ondersteuners waaronder twee participatiewet medewerkers en daarnaast wisselende studentassistenten. De teamleden zijn sociale en betrokkenen medewerkers en hoewel iedereen een duidelijke eigen verantwoordelijkheid heeft staan de medewerkers elkaar bij wanneer nodig. Er is in het team voldoende ruimte voor flexibiliteit en er wordt hybride gewerkt.

PhD: Spatial Optimization of Land Use in Brazil

The MATOPIBA region in the Brazilian Cerrado is of major national and global importance: it is one of South America’s most agriculturally productive landscapes, a biodiversity hotspot, and home to Indigenous people, Quilombola, smallholder farmers, and large agribusinesses among others. Therefore, future land use strategies in MATOPIBA require balancing agricultural production with biodiversity conservation and social justice, while also accounting for effects of climate change. In this position, you will contribute to such land use strategies by quantifying the synergies and trade-offs between agricultural production and biodiversity conservation for different land use configurations and stakeholder preferences. Hereto, you will compute Pareto frontiers with spatial optimization algorithms.

More specifically, you will:

• Travel to Brazil to interact with various stakeholders in land use in MATOPIBA;
• Translate stakeholders’ preferences in terms of ‘productive agriculture’ and ‘healthy biodiversity’ into quantifiable impact indicators;
• Develop a spatial optimization algorithm that finds land use configurations that optimize these indicators;
• Compute Pareto frontiers under different climate and socio-economic scenarios to evaluation the robustness of land use solutions for all stakeholder groups; and
• Write academic articles and policy documents that summarize the above to generate and disseminate knowledge on the possible pathways to sustainable land use futures in MATOPIBA.

This PhD position is part of the project “Frontiers of MATOPIBA landscapes”, which examines how agricultural production and biodiversity conservation can be balanced in Brazil’s MATOPIBA region under future climate and socio-economic conditions. It has the aim to support evidence-based decisions to form sustainable, just, climate-resilient land use strategies that protect biodiversity, food security, and local livelihoods. The project is fully funded through the Dutch Research Agenda and the Brazilian research council CNPq. Within the project, you will closely collaborate with another PhD candidate at Utrecht University on stakeholder perspectives, several consortium members in Brazil, and the Department of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University.

PhD: Co-production of land use futures for Brazil

The MATOPIBA region in the Brazilian Cerrado is of major national and global importance: it is one of South America’s most agriculturally productive landscapes, a biodiversity hotspot, and home to Indigenous people, Quilombola, smallholder farmers, and large agribusinesses among others. Therefore, future land use strategies in MATOPIBA require balancing agricultural production with biodiversity conservation and social justice, while also accounting for the effects of climate change. In this position, you will contribute to co-producing such land use strategies by interacting with the different stakeholder groups, including policy makers, to understand how agricultural production and biodiversity impact various people’s livelihoods. Methodologically, you will use qualitative methods such as field observations, focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and participatory/ co-creation of maps.

More specifically, you will:

• Travel to Brazil to conduct field research through which you interact with various actor groups and stakeholders such as policy makers and private sectors in land use in MATOPIBA;
• Discover their preferences in terms of ‘productive agriculture’ and ‘healthy biodiversity’ through focus groups and semi-structured interviews;
• Facilitate exercises of participatory mapping to co-create maps to identify desired land use futures for various groups;
• Further discuss and document the potential of alternative land use futures with the stakeholders in public, private, and civil society sectors; and
• Write academic articles and policy documents that summarize the above to generate and disseminate knowledge on the possible pathways to sustainable land use futures in MATOPIBA.

This PhD position is part of the project “Frontiers of MATOPIBA landscapes”, which examines how agricultural production and biodiversity conservation can be balanced in Brazil’s MATOPIBA region under future climate and socio-economic conditions. It has the aim to support evidence-based decisions to form sustainable, just, climate-resilient land use strategies that protect biodiversity, food security, and local livelihoods. The project is fully funded through the Dutch Research Agenda and the Brazilian research council CNPq. Within the project, you will closely collaborate with another PhD candidate at Utrecht University on spatial optimization of land use, as well as with several consortium members in Brazil, and the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

PhD Position on Predictive Plant–Microbiome–Pathogen Interactions

You will join the Plant-Microbe Interactions group and work within the NWO Vici project ResistoBiome: Predictive microbiome modelling for resilient and sustainable potato cropping systems.

In this project, you will investigate why the same pathogen can cause severe disease in one microbial environment but establish poorly in another. You will work with a unique collection of 100 Dutch agricultural soil microbiomes and grow potato plants in the automated phenotyping facilities of the Netherlands Plant Eco-phenotyping Centre (NPEC). Using high-resolution imaging, you will follow plant growth, physiology and disease development after infection with Phytophthora or Ralstonia.

You will combine these phenotyping data with bacterial and fungal microbiome profiles to build predictive models of pathogen invasion and plant performance. Working in close collaboration with with a postdoctoral researcher and a fellow PhD candidate, you will identify microbial taxa and microbial interactions that are most strongly associated with disease resistance or susceptibility.

A key part of your project will be to move from prediction to biological understanding. You will select promising microbes emerging from the models, isolate and experimentally test them, and investigate how they influence pathogen establishment and plant health. This will allow you to ask not only which microbes predict disease outcomes, but also why they matter.

During your PhD, you will:

• perform large-scale potato experiments using 100 contrasting soil microbiomes;
• use automated high-throughput phenotyping to quantify plant growth, physiology and disease development;
• profile root and leaf microbiomes using amplicon sequencing;
• analyse integrated microbiome and phenotyping datasets;
• contribute to machine-learning models predicting pathogen invasion success and plant resilience;
• identify microbial taxa and interactions associated with contrasting disease outcomes;
• isolate and experimentally validate selected candidate microbes;
• design follow-up experiments to understand how protective microbes influence plant–pathogen interactions;
• collaborate closely with researchers in microbiology, plant pathology, phenotyping, bioinformatics and predictive modelling.

The project gives you the opportunity to work across scales: from thousands of plants and complex microbiome datasets to mechanistic experiments with individual microbial isolates.

PhD: Freeze-Fight-Flight Dynamics in Mental Health Care

As a PhD candidate you are responsible for the clinical part of this project. You will design studies, coordinate data collection at Altrecht Center for Personality Disorders, and analyse longitudinal EMA data collected both during psychotherapy sessions and in daily life. You will collaborate with therapists and patients through focus groups to define meaningful indicators of defensive states and to ensure clinical relevance throughout the project. You will test proof-of-principle freeze-targeted interventions and contribute to the development of state-specific clinical guidelines. You will also write scientific articles and contribute to dissemination activities. Throughout the project, you will work in close collaboration with a PhD candidate at the Methods and Statistics department, for example on complex data analysis, and the development of personalised visualisations for use by clinicians and patients.

You also contribute to teaching activities within the Department of Clinical Psychology (approximately 10% of your appointment).