Medewerker studentzaken Psychologie

Als allround ondersteuner maak je deel uit van het onderwijsondersteuningsteam en werk je mee aan het soepel verlopen van diverse onderwijsondersteunende processen binnen de opleiding Psychologie. Samen met je collega’s verzorg je o.a. de bachelor open dagen, buluitreikingen en de selectie. Ook zorg je ervoor dat studenten toegang krijgen tot de juiste informatie en systemen, bijvoorbeeld de opnames van hoorcolleges. De omgeving waarin je gaat werken is dynamisch, het ene moment ben je heel proactief aan het werk, het volgende moment reageer je op wat er binnenkomt. De verschillende taken en vragen maken het werk afwisselend.

De taken en verantwoordelijkheden zijn divers en bestaan onder andere uit:

• aanvragen van studenten verwerken;
• ondersteunen bij de organisatie van evenementen en trainingen;
• administratieve werkzaamheden in Osiris en Brightspace;
• notuleren bij vergaderingen;
• coördineren van de studentassistentenpool;
• diverse ad-hoc werkzaamheden.

Omdat je met iedereen uit het team samenwerkt en van alles wat meekrijgt weet je steeds beter wat er speelt en word je vanzelf een belangrijk onderdeel van het team. Bij de evenementen die we organiseren wordt je aanwezigheid verwacht, ook als dit niet op jouw werkdag is (bv een open dag op een zaterdag). Deze vinden een paar keer per jaar plaats.

PhD in Global Talent Interdependence and Europe’s Strategic Innovation Ambitions

At the same time, geopolitical tensions, migration restrictions, and national security considerations may constrain the international mobility of researchers, potentially reshaping global knowledge networks and innovation outcomes.

This PhD project examines how Europe’s strategic innovation ambitions depend on the mobility of global talent, with a particular focus on STEM PhD recipients as key actors in science- and technology-based innovation. The project bridges economic geography and innovation studies to understand how doctoral training, international mobility, and institutional contexts shape where knowledge is created and where it is ultimately translated into technological and economic value.

The project combines large-scale longitudinal data on PhD recipients with complementary sources such as publication and patent data, and aims to enrich these with other sources on individual paths and preferences. The PhD candidate will have the opportunity to develop unique datasets and apply quantitative and mixed-method approaches to address policy-relevant questions at the intersection of innovation, migration, and geography.

Main responsibilities include:

• Designing the research project focusing on topics related to global talent interdependencies and innovation;
• Collecting, processing and analysing large-scale data (e.g. publication, patent, and career data);
• Writing and publishing research papers in fulfilment of the PhD requirements;
• Presenting your research at (inter)national conferences, workshops, and seminars;
• Completing a dissertation within four years;
• Contributing to the teaching activities of the department.

The successful candidate will be based at the Economic Geography Section of the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, with close collaboration with the Innovation Studies Section at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Both groups are leading internationally in their respective disciplines and provide an exciting and collaborative environment, with room to learn and develop professionally at the frontier of academic research.

You will work under the supervision of Dr Burcu Özgün, Dr Giovanna Capponi, and Professor Carolina Castaldi.

PhD Position in Regulatory Innovation

Although animal testing currently remains a key step in the development of medicines, it often provides limited insights into how drugs will work in humans, while also being time-consuming and costly. A successful transition to the use of NAMs requires not only technical changes, but also cultural, policy and organisational changes. This necessitates the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, such as researchers, risk assessors, companies and policymakers.

You will conduct PhD research into the integration of NAMs into the regulatory ecosystem, with the aim of improving the translational potential of medicines and reducing the use of laboratory animals. In doing so, you will draw on the unique knowledge base within Ombion (Centre for Animal-Free Biomedical Translation), an ambitious national programme aimed at accelerating the transition to animal-free biomedical innovations. Transition projects within Ombion focus on animal-free innovations for new therapies for asthma/COPD, osteoarthritis/arthritis, ALS and cystic fibrosis.

Potential research topics include:

• the needs of target users of NAMs such as researchers (NAM developers and pharmaceutical industry) and risk assessors in determining the desired level of evidence generated by NAMs;
• the experiences of NAM developers and end-users with qualification procedures and the role of supporting tools, such as a Regulatory Dashboard;
• confidence in NAM data among different target groups and in different contexts (predicting the desired effect in humans vs. ruling out safety risks);
• transferability of approaches and models from research into the application of NAMs in the safety assessment of chemical substances to medicinal products and vice versa.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Regulatory Innovation

You will contribute to strengthening the position of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) within the national and international regulatory ecosystem. Your focus will be on unlocking and applying regulatory knowledge to accelerate the transition. You will work multidisciplinary within a large network of partners from academia, government and the private sector, acting as a link between knowledge, policy, practice and business. Your activities will include:

• Building expertise: you will map out the regulatory ecosystem surrounding NAMs used for biomedical translation and the safety assessment of medicinal products. You will develop, integrate and share your knowledge of (primarily European) regulatory frameworks and the validation and qualification of these models.
• Sharing and disseminating knowledge: you will develop and manage an interactive Regulatory Dashboard that makes knowledge about NAMs, validation and qualification procedures accessible to developers and end-users. In addition, you will design processes to streamline regulatory queries and advice.
• Stakeholder engagement: you will build sustainable relationships with policymakers, regulatory bodies, companies and researchers. You will facilitate knowledge exchange and networking events on the regulatory aspects of animal-free innovation.
• Regulatory Science: you will translate relevant topics from the Ombion programme into scientific research questions for the evaluation of regulatory systems and processes. Additionally, within the programme, you will be part of the supervision team for a PhD candidate conducting research in the field of regulatory science and innovation.
• Alignment and coordination: you will oversee regulatory activities within Ombion and work closely with the regulatory affairs officers of the transition projects and the regulatory managers at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

PhD Mediated Sciences: how social media impacts climate communication practice.

Do you want to do field research on how social media platforms influence climate science communication in practice? In this PhD project, you will study the experiences, routine practices, and ideas of science communicators who use social media platforms such as X and LinkedIn to communicate academic knowledge about climate and sustainability. The project will investigate this by looking at concrete case studies within the Dutch context (within sites of commercial, academic, journalistic science communication/public engagement). The purpose is to understand how platform features like engagement analytics (e.g. views, likes) or perceptions of the affordances of interfaces become embedded within these communicators’ norms of content creation. How do practitioners seek to uphold science’s public credibility in their work as they participate in attention economies that have been shown to incentivize disinformation? These questions are all the more urgent and societally relevant today, because the rise of social media platforms has multiplied science communication actors and is challenging the dominance of traditional science communicators. This PhD research project will be situated within the team-project (Vidi), Mediated Science: Expanding How We Study Social Media’s Influence on Climate Disinformation led by Donya Alinejad at Utrecht University’s Department of Media and Culture Studies.

Your main responsibilities will include:

• Conducting research of excellent empirical and analytical quality in close collaboration with the PI and the Postdoc;
• Publishing in leading international peer-reviewed journals and contributing to edited volumes or other publications where relevant;
• Presenting research findings at international conferences, workshops, and academic networks;
• Supporting as well as independently organizing local and international academic events;
• Meaningfully engaging with societal stakeholders where relevant;
• Contributing to the project’s public communication strategy and knowledge dissemination activities;
• Managing your own project under the guidance of the supervision team;
• Participating actively in the intellectual life of the research group, including seminars, reading groups, and collaborative writing processes.