PHD Candidate

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Sociology » Social changes

Sociology » Societal behaviour

Computer science » Programming

Computer science » Informatics

First Stage Researcher (R1) Application Deadline 12 Nov 2026 - 22:59 (UTC)

Country Netherlands

Type of Contract Temporary

Job Status Not Applicable

Hours Per Week 38.0

Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme

Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

About this position . In this 4-year fully funded PhD position, the focus is on devising new network science approaches for analyzing longitudinal, population-scale social network data on the Dutch population data, sourced from Statistics Netherlands. Such data presents distinctive methodological challenges: their scale and temporal character require fast algorithms and careful tailoring of commonly used network measures and algorithms.

One particular challenge for the candidate applying for this position, is to develop novel measures of structural (in)equivalence in social networks for obtaining an interpretable understanding of how social network structure differs between different subgroups of a population. Moreover, when applied to two entirely different populations, these methods of comparing network structure should facilitate cross-country comparative analyses of population-scale social network structure, enabling an understanding of similarities and differences in the social fabric of countries.

In addition to the above, there is also space for the candidate to pursue a direction of research related to network science that fits both the candidate and the broader aims of the group.

Embedding. The PhD candidate will be employed at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), which is the computer science and AI institute of the Faculty of Science of Leiden University. More in particular, the candidate wil...