Vid Umeå universitet finns världsledande forskning inom flera områden. Vi erbjuder ett attraktivt utbud av utbildningar och goda studiemiljöer. Campus utgör en inspirerande miljö för de 4 200 anställda och 36 700 studenter som valt oss. För oss är det självklart att sträva efter jämställdhet och mångfald. Vi samarbetar gärna med näringsliv och organisationer i regionen och övriga världen. Tillsammans står vi inför spännande utmaningar och stora möjligheter.

Postdoktor i välfärdsforskning

Välfärdsforskningen vid Sociologiska institutionen utgör en s k stark forskningsmiljö vid Umeå universitet. Vi avser nu att förstärka vår framgångsrika forskningsmiljö med minst en postdoktor inom området. Anställningen som postdoktor omfattar 24 månader.

Innehavaren förväntas i huvudsak bedriva egen forskning inom den starka forskningsmiljön Välfärdsforskning (se bifogat forskningsprogram). Även undervisning kan ingå i arbetsuppgifterna, dock högst till en femtedel av arbetstiden.

Behörig att söka är den som avlagt doktorsexamen inom Sociologi eller närliggande discipliner, högst tre år innan ansökningstidens utgång, och som inte tidigare innehaft postdoktorsanställning vid Umeå universitet. Föräldraledighet, sjukskrivning, militärtjänstgöring etc kan innebära att även den som erhållit doktorsgraden innan 090215 kan komma ifråga.

Som bedömningsgrund för tillsättningen gäller i första hand vetenskaplig skicklighet. Sökande måste kunna tala och skriva engelska flytande. Vi ser särskilt positivt på sökande som erhållit sin doktorsgrad vid annat lärosäte än Umeå universitet.

Ansökan (på engelska, gärna elektroniskt) ska innehålla
-fullständig meritförteckning, inklusive publikationslista
-forskningsplan (högst fem sidor)
-sökandens avhandling samt ytterligare högst tre publikationer

Upplysningar om tjänstens inriktning och krav lämnas av professor Stefan Svallfors, Sociologiska institutionen, Umeå universitet, e-post stefan.svallfors@soc.umu.se.

Vi räknar med att kalla ett urval av de sökande på intervjuer 3–4 maj 2012.

Facklig information lämnas av SACO, tel 090-786 53 65, SEKO, tel 090-786 52 96 samt ST, tel 090-786 54 31.

Handlingar som skickas elektroniskt ska vara i word- eller pdf-format.

Ansökningstiden för denna tjänst har passerat.

Umeå University - with its 36,700 students and over 4,200 employees - is an organization in constant change and development. Umeå University conducts groundbreaking research within several areas - several in which we are among the best in the world - within others regarded as the leaders in Sweden. We are one of Sweden’s largest providers of education and offer a broad and attractive range of courses and programmes. Our campus constitutes an inspiring environment for everyone that studies and works here. We wish to co-operate with companies and organizations throughout the Umeå region and all over the world.

Post-doctoral fellowship in Welfare Research

Welfare research at the Department of Sociology constitutes one of the strong research environments at Umeå University. We now intend to strengthen our internationally leading research environment with at least one Post-doctoral fellow in the field. The employment as Post-doctoral fellow is limited to two years.

We expect the holder of a Post-doctoral fellowship to conduct research within the strong research environment “Welfare research” (see the attached research program). The employment may include teaching, but to a maximum of 20% of the working time.

The candidate needs to hold a PhD degree, in Sociology or related disciplines, which is not older than three years at the final date of the application. Time on parental leave, sick leave or military service will not count against the three-year limit. Applicants who have previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in the same or a related field at Umeå University are not eligible.

The applications will be judged on the quality of the scientific publications and of the research proposal. The applicant must be fluent in English. We are particularly positive about candidates who received their PhD degrees from other universities than Umeå University.

Applications for the positions should include (in English, electronically):
-Complete CV, including a list of publications
-Research proposal (maximum five pages)
-The PhD thesis of the candidate, and a maximum of three additional publications

For further information about the positions, contact Professor Stefan Svallfors, Department of Sociology, Umeå University; e-mail: stefan.svallfors@soc.umu.se.

We expect to call a shortlist of candidates for interview on May 3–4 2012.

Union information is available from SACO, +46-(0)90-786 53 65, SEKO, +46-(0)90-786 52 96 and ST, +46-(0)90-786 54 31.

Documents sent electronically should be in MS Word or PDF format.

The application period for this advert has expired.

Appendix: Research program

Our research program is organised around four interconnected ‘core themes’: Work and labour market trajectories; Dynamics of family and gender; Processes and outcomes of marginalisation; The determinants and dynamics of attitudes to public policies. It should be emphasised that the core research themes just represent an initial way of organizing and presenting our research agenda. The overlap and links between themes are obvious, and our goal is to cross the boundaries between research themes as the program develops.
Work and labour market trajectories: This theme develops our research on working conditions, work environment, and labour market entries and exits. In the past decade, working conditions have changed as a result of technological innovations, industrial restructuring, a growing service sector, and a smorgasbord of management strategies. Linked to this development is an increase of temporary employment and repeated reports about deteriorating psychosocial work environments. Another challenge, closely linked to issues concerning work conditions and health, arises from the ageing of the work force and the increased proportion of elderly in the society. One important objective is to highlight the quality of work/employment aspects in relation to labour market participation and inequality in health. The focus here will be on longitudinal mechanisms in analysing the long-term exposure to different working conditions in relation to critical labour market events and health status later in life. In addition, time series analyses will enable us to study whether the impact of different exposures has changed and to what extent the consequences of such exposures vary over time. Another central aspect is to develop research that facilitates a better understanding of the long-term effects of unemployment in relation to the role of welfare state interventions concerning health rehabilitation, activating, maintaining, or readjusting economic capacities of individuals and households. Aspects of future labour supply will be addressed through a series of pertinent research questions that extend our research about work and labour market participation among the older work force. We need to cast new light on factors that are of importance for the decision to leave work early as well as the possibilities of remaining active in the labour market. We also need to expand our analysis to also include the employer: Are employers interested in keeping an elderly work force and under which circumstances are they prepared to do so?

Dynamics of family and gender: Questions about changing family forms, the connection between work and family, power relations in families, gender equality within families, fertility, and gendered health outcomes are central to our future research agenda. Questions about national institutional settings and their impact on women’s and men’s possibility to combine paid work and family life are key here: What kind of policy context makes it easier to balance work and family? How does the connection between the labour market and family formation differ between countries? Is it possible to identify social policy measures that facilitate the combination of paid work and family life among parents? We also want to push research forward when it comes to the organisation of family life. While previous research on work–family conflict has focused largely on quantitative demands such as work hours and workload, our ambition is to deepen the understanding of how work load in combination with work environment and the organization of work might affect family life, gender equality, and individual well-being. The organization of family life is of great importance not only for work–family conflict. It also impacts on family formation decisions (moving together, getting married, and getting children) and the effect of these decisions. Labour market attachment of parents (mostly mothers) is temporarily interrupted by parental leave, possibly resulting in long-lasting negative effects on women’s labour market careers. Declining fertility rates all over Europe comprise one major factor explaining the continent’s increasingly older population. One result is future labour shortage, which makes it essential to keep women in the labour force, as well as to keep fertility rates high. A further important aspect of our research agenda is to reach beyond conventional understandings of ‘family’ and to uncover some of the processes at work in families that influence various aspects of equality. Central issues here are how money, consumption, labour and care work are shared, how decisions are arrived at, how power relations play out and how gender equality is understood and practiced.

Processes and outcomes of marginalisation: We know from cross-sectional data that welfare problems are interrelated; people suffering from poverty and economic problems are also more prone to suffer from health problems, stress, anxiety, loneliness, victimization, labour market problems, etc. A vital task for our research agenda is to understand the way different social and health problems are interlinked as well as the process of marginalisation; that is, to empirically analyse what is often called the ‘vicious circle’ of events that ultimately leads to a situation of social exclusion (here understood as multi-dimensional disadvantage that leads to a rupture of the individual’s relational links with the wider society). The understanding of causation within this research area is of utmost importance. Our intention is to continue and deepen our research concerning if and how welfare problems cluster in different sections of the population. We also intend to improve our knowledge about the duration of welfare problems. However, the most important task is to provide a better understanding of causal links between different kinds of specific welfare outcomes, detecting vicious circles of marginalisation. Furthermore, we will put much more effort into understanding individuals’ preferences and in what way preferences affect consumption behaviour and individuals’ subjective evaluation of well-being.
The determinants and dynamics of attitudes to public policies: The public’s attitudes towards public policies that affect the distribution of welfare are, of course, formed by the processes and levels of the actual distribution. By affecting the possibilities for launching and implementing public policies, such attitudes are also a possible indirect cause of various welfare outcomes. Our last core theme therefore concerns the determinants and dynamics of attitudes related to public policies. This line of research will extend existing research on attitudes and values as hitherto conducted in several ways. One important research aim is to use the repeated cross-sectional data sets that will consecutively become available in the comparative attitudes survey programmes to study the dynamics of attitudes towards welfare and inequality in comparative context. In this respect, researchers have up until recently been severely restrained by data access, but this is about to change, as subsequent rounds of the European Social Survey and the International Social Survey Program become available, and we intend to remain at the forefront in this regard. Questions about convergence or divergence in value patterns across industrialised nations are pertinent here, as is the changing impact of social cleavages on attitudes and value orientations in a comparative perspective. A further important aim is to strengthen comparative research by explicitly modelling the macro-context and bringing it in as variables in multi-level analyses. Until recently, data related to welfare and redistribution that are specific enough to reveal any possible variations in attitudes between different institutional and cultural environments, yet comparable across countries, were crucially lacking. In this respect, an ESS module on changing welfare attitudes in Europe, fielded in 2008, will add considerable leverage. Data from this survey module will provide essential input to analyses under this theme.