Vacancy for a funded PhD Project in ‘Family Property, Housing Markets and Welfare Regimes’ at the University of Amsterdam
(FMG, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies) The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) is the largest educational and research institution in the social sciences in the Netherlands. The Faculty serves 9,000 students in numerous Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication Science, Psychology, Social Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, and Educational Sciences. Academic staff are employed in education as well as research. There are over 1,200 employees at the Faculty, which resides in a number of buildings in the centre of Amsterdam.
The Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies is one of the largest departments in the FMG. Research and education are carried out by special institutes.
The College of Social Sciences (CSS) and the Graduate School for the Social Sciences
(GSSS) are responsible for the undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in the social sciences. Research takes place under the aegis of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), a multidisciplinary research institute.
The PhD project will be carried out at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), Urban Geographies Programme Group, and forms part of the European Research Council funded project HOUWEL: Housing Markets and Welfare State Transformations:
How Family Housing Property Is Reshaping Welfare Regimes HOUWEL: General description
This project will investigate how the growing reliance on housing markets and family
property wealth in meeting welfare and security needs is transforming contemporary welfare states. In recent decades, governments have encouraged home purchase as a means for households to accumulate housing assets, thereby insuring themselves against hardship.
Meanwhile, increasing market values have enhanced perceptions of housing property as a form of social security, especially as traditional forms have faded away. Welfare regimes have thus been undergoing realignment with growing emphasis on the extension of markets and individual responsibility in satisfying needs. This study will break new ground in examining how housing markets and welfare systems interact in different regime contexts, advancing understanding of the ways housing markets and home ownership assume more or less prominent roles in welfare system pathways. This study will be realized through three subprojects focused on six countries:
1) institutional studies and macro statistical comparisons will evaluate how frameworks of social and welfare security shape, and are being shaped by, housing systems;
2) qualitative field studies will assess how families in different housing and welfare regimes perceive, use and exchange housing assets to enhance economic security and welfare capacity;
3) analyses of international panel data will address how households are being affected by shifting welfare and housing market conditions.
PhD Project Description
Subproject two, Meanings & Practices, focuses on the regime related and context contingent meanings of home and housing markets that shape the use of housing property to serve family and individual welfare and security needs. Based upon qualitative field research in six countries, this project addresses how individuals in different contexts relate to their home in terms of investments as well as the role owner-occupied homes play in family negotiations and exchanges? The main empirical research programme involves qualitative interviews with individuals in various housing situations. Research will be led by the PhD student under the guidance of the principle investigator, and executed with the assistance of local research assistants.
The PhD candidate will be part of a larger group working together on the HOUWEL project.
There will also be co-operation with members of another team working on a different, but related ERC Starting Grant (HOWCOME: The Interplay Between the Upward Trend in Home-Ownership and Income Inequality in Advanced Welfare Democracies: Interacting Causes and Consequences of Social Inequality in Different Institutional Settings, Principal Investigator Dr. Caroline Dewilde). This represents a significant concentration of resources dedicated to comparative housing research at the University of Amsterdam, enabling real and significant progress in this domain.
Requirements:
• Master’s or Research Master’s Degree in one of the social sciences (or expectation of completion in the near future);
• Affinity with ethnographic or other qualitative methods in the social sciences and familiarity with the collection and analysis of interview data
• Interest in interdisciplinary research, especially in the domain of housing;
• Willingness to present and publish in the English language, and to teach in the field of Geography/Social Sciences (in Dutch and/or English);
• Language competencies in languages other than Dutch or English will be considered an advantage, in particular Italian and German.
The starting date for the appointment will be September 1st, 2012. The full-time appointment is initially for a period of one year; in case of satisfactory performance it will be extended by a maximum of a further three years (i.e. a total of four years) leading to the completion of a PhD. The gross monthly salary will be € 2,042 in the first year and € 2,612 in the fourth year in the case of a full-time position (38 hrs / week) plus 8% holiday allowance, 8.3% end-of- year allowance, in conformity with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.
Applicants should send their application, consisting of, 1) a motivation letter explaining their interest and commitment, 2) a CV and two letters of reference, 3) a short example of
academic writing (e.g. a journal article, chapter of MA thesis, an essay), by email to
b.a.lawa@uva.nl before the March 16th 2012. All correspondence should be in English and by email. Further enquiries concerning the project itself can be obtained from Dr. Richard Ronald, the Principal Investigator of this project (r.ronald@uva.nl). Information on the AISSR can be obtained from www.aissr.uva.nl.
