Department: Faculty of Law
Regime Full-time

Let’s shape the future – University of Antwerp

The Faculties of Law and of Social Sciences and the GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence are jointly seeking to fill a full-time (100%) vacancy for a

PhD position (100%) in the area of federalismmultilevel governance and trust

We are looking to hire a new team member to join and support our new LEGITIMULT Horizon Europe project. The successful applicant will conduct research within the research project Legitimate Crisis Management and Multilevel Governance (LEGITIMULT) which is financed by the European Commission (Horizon Europe) and the Swiss Federal Government’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

The research Consortium consists of eleven partner institutions from across Europe who, in different Work Packages, collaborate to assess the impact of the measures taken by various international, national and subnational governments on multilevel institutions and intergovernmental relations in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. LEGITIMULT analyses the effect of these measures on democratic governance, highlighting to what extent multilevel governance influences their impact on democracy, favouring a model of legitimate crisis management.

The University of Antwerp will lead the thematic Work Package on Legitimate Crisis Governance and Trust. The PhD candidate will conduct empirical research to assess how pandemic response measures taken at various levels of government have affected citizen’s trust in these various government levels, through a vignette experiment in four countries and a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in a subset of EU member states. The PhD candidate will also support data-collection and analysis of other Work Packages, in which various disciplines such as law, economics and social science collaborate.

About us

The University of Antwerp is a university in Belgium with about 20.000 students and 6.200 staff members in 9 faculties. The university is a strong research university with more than 3.650 scientific papers per year and ranks fifth in the ranking of young universities (Times Higher Education Millennials).

The Government and Law (G&L) research group is part of the Law Faculty (University of Antwerp). G&L is focused on legitimate governance in a diverse, complex and globalized environment. It studies in particular the impact of legal, political and social developments on the legal concept of government, on the operation of and relations between state and non-state actors in governance, on fundamental principles such as democracy, rule of law, federalism, solidarity and multilevel governance, and on the protection of persons against arbitrary government action. The group combines legal-doctrinal analysis with a broad variety of methods from and collaboration with other disciplines.

The research group Politics & Public Governance (P&PG) is part of the Department of Political Science (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp). P&PG studies how politics and public governance respond to (a) the increasing diversity of citizens and society and (b) the multi-level and multi-actor nature of policymaking and policy implementation. By combining a political science and a public administration perspective, our research wants to understand the nature of contemporary politics and public governance, its causes, effects, and, ultimately, its democratic legitimacy. To this end, P&PG studies political and public governance institutions, their evolution and how institutional mechanisms shape actors’ scope of action, positions, decisions and behaviour. Public administration research at University of Antwerp is ranked 20th (1st in Belgium) on the Global Shanghai Ranking for PA 2021.

G&L and P&PG are also part of the GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence (University of Antwerp), an interdisciplinary research consortium focusing on “Trust and Distrust in Multi-level Governance”. GOVTRUST combines high-level scientific expertise of three faculties (Law, Social Sciences and Economics) and five disciplines (political science, communication science, law, behavioural economics and public administration) to jointly conduct frontline interdisciplinary research on the dynamics, causes and effects of trust and distrust in multi-level governance systems. In particular, GOVTRUST studies the trust relations between political, administrative, regulatory, and judicial actors as well as trust in and of citizens and society.

Position

• You conduct research leading to a PhD on the topic of trust in multilevel systems
• You publish co-authored scientific articles in international journals related to the research project.
• You conduct interdisciplinary research within a vibrant national and international research environment
• You cooperate with partners of the LEGITIMULT consortium

Profile

• You hold a master degree in Law, Political Science or a related discipline.
• You have affinity with constitutional law, federal studies and multilevel governance.
• You are interested in interdisciplinary research and have expertise in or are prepared to familiarize yourself with techniques such as vignette experiments and Qualitative Comparative Analysis.
• You can submit outstanding academic results.
• Students in the final year of their degree can also apply.
• Foreign candidates are encouraged to apply.
• Your academic qualities comply with the requirements stipulated in the university’s policy.
• You are quality-oriented, conscientious, creative and cooperative.
• You have an excellent knowledge of English.

What we offer

• a doctoral scholarship for a period of three years (two years, with the possibility of renewal for a further one-year period after positive evaluation) with October 1^st 2022 as the start date of the scholarship;
• Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for doctoral scholarship holders on the pay scales for Contract Research Staff (Dutch: Bijzonder Academisch Personeel, BAP).
• You will work at UAntwerp City Campus in a dynamic, stimulating and professionally challenging work environment in the research groups Government & Law, Politics & Public Governance and the interdisciplinary team of the GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence. You will receive substantive and methodological training.
• Find out more about working at University of Antwerp here.

Want to apply?

• Applications may only be submitted online, until the closing date of 1 August 2022 and should include a copy of your CV and a cover letter.
• A pre-selection will be made from amongst the submitted applications. The remainder of the selection procedure is specific to the position and will be determined by the selection panel.
• The interviews of the candidates, preselected by a selection panel, will take place between end of August and beginning of September 2022.
• More information about the online application form can be obtained from vacatures@uantwerpen.be.
• For questions about the profile and the description of duties, please contact Prof. Patricia Popelier, patricia.popelier@uantwerpen.be or Peter Bursens, peter.bursens@uantwerpen.be.