Postdoc ERC Project FIRMS: How Firms Shape Career Inequality Through (Mental) Health
How do firms create unequal careers, and how is this linked to workers’ health?
The Department of Sociology has an opening for a postdoctoral researcher who will contribute to the ERC-funded research project FIRMS – Firms and Careers: How the Workplace Structures Career Inequality.
As a postdoctoral researcher, you will study how organizational contexts influence health outcomes and how these effects accumulate into long-term career inequality. Join an ambitious ERC-funded project and work with unique longitudinal data to answer pressing societal questions!
How firms shape career inequality through (mental) health
The project conceptualizes firms as social environments that differ in authority structures, work intensity, technological change, and workplace culture. These organizational differences can systematically affect workers’ mental health, for example through exposure to stress, insecurity, or limited control at work. Mental health, in turn, shapes careers by influencing sickness absence, job mobility, and long-term wage growth. You will study when and for whom mental health functions as a mechanism linking firm contexts to unequal career trajectories.
Your research addresses a central theoretical question: how do differences between firms translate into persistent career inequality through workers’ (mental) health
Empirically, you will work with rich longitudinal linked employer–employee data combined with population-wide health registers, focusing primarily on the Netherlands and Norway. These data make it possible to follow workers and firms over long periods and to identify how firm-level conditions are associated with mental health outcomes and subsequent career inequality.
You will work closely with the principal investigator and the PhD team, combining life course theory with organizational and inequality perspectives to develop and test mechanism-based explanations using large-scale longitudinal data.
Your application & contact
If you recognize yourself in this profile and are interested in the role, we look forward to receiving your application. You can apply online via the red button. Please submit your application as a single PDF, including a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and the contact details of two referees. The application deadline is 30 March 2026 (23:59 CET) . Interviews are expected to take place in the week of 13 April.
In case of equal suitability, the internal candidate is preferred over the external candidate.
Candidates who require a work permit should be aware that appointment is subject to the Dutch Employment of Foreign Nationals Act.
For questions about the position or more information on the FIRMS project, please contact Thijs Bol (t.bol@uva.nl).
