PhD position at UAB funded by the TOUCH COFUND project

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PhD position at UAB funded by the TOUCH COFUND project

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Job description

Offer DescriptionTopic: Social Media Use and Young People’s Mental Health: A Quantitative Social Science ApproachA PhD position is available at the Department of Sociology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) within the Centre for Demographic Studies, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin (TCD) within the Trinity Centre for Global Health. The PhD will be supervised by Pablo Gracia (UAB) and Alina Cosma (TCD). We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with outstanding skills in social research and quantitative meth-ods to investigate Social Media Use and Young People’s Mental Health.Digital technologies are an integral part of adolescents’ mental health linked to differ-ent opportunities and risks. While several studies found that adolescent screen time correlates to poorer mental health (Kelly et al. 2018; Twenge et al. 2018), studies indi-cate that such associations largely depend on the context and type of social media engagement, as well as on methodological design (Bohnert & Gracia, 2023; Living-stone et al., 2020; Orben & Przybylski, 2019; Valkenburg et al., 2022). Overall, the mechanisms linking social media use to young people’s mental health remain unclear. We need innovative methodological approaches to examine heterogeneous and under-lying mechanisms connecting social media use to young people’s mental health. This project will combine innovative quantitative approaches from sociology, demography, psychology and public health to address the following questions:1. How has the expansion of social media impacted young people’s mental health across different sociodemographic groups and societies?
2. What are the causal mechanisms linking social media use to mental health from childhood to late adolescence?The project will involve high-quality doctoral supervision from Autonomous University of Barcelona (in the disciplines of Sociology and Population) and Trinity College Dublin (i.e., in the disciplines of Psychology and Global Health). The PhD project will apply an innovative transdisciplinary approach using advanced quantitative methodologies ap-plied to high-quality population-level data, such as longitudinal methodologies, compu-tational methods, multi-level modelling, and causal inference designs.The successful candidate will be enrolled in the PhD Sociology doctoral program at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in the framework of the TOUCH project. TOUCH (“Towards the next generatiOn of excellent yoUng doctoral researchers on mental health by developing an intersectoral & transdisciplinary approaCH”) is a new excellent doctoral programme co-funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Ac-tions of the European Commission and led by the UAB for the recruitment and training of 24 doctoral candidates in the field of mental health and wellbeing.The two supervisors are leading experts in the research field of this PhD project. Prof. Pablo Gracia (main supervisor) leads a team on “Families, Well-Being and Inequalities” within the larger DEMFAM group from the Centre for Demographic Studies. Prof. Gra-cia is currently the lead PI of the DIGINEQ project, funded by the European Research Council (CoG) (2024-2029), in which he supervises multiple PhDs and Postdocs who examine how social media use links to disparities and inequalities in adolescent well-being and mental health. Dr. Alina Cosma (co-supervisor) leads a research group in Psychology and Global Health at Trinity College Dublin and has extensive experience in designing and managing cross-national school health surveys focused on adoles-cent health. Her research spans a variety of topics, including time trends and predic-tors of change in adolescent mental health (from within-country and cross-country), as well as the social and structural determinants of adolescent well-being.We are looking for candidates with an excellent CV, a high degree of ambition and motivation, and with strong personal qualities to effectively work as part of a Team. We offer a 3-year full-time contract (37,5 hours/week) and a gross salary of 2.375 €/month (the salary will be the same for the 3 years).
The candidates must fulfil the following eligibility criteria from the EC: Mobility rule: candidates must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately preceding the deadline for the programme call. Experience rule: researchers must be doctoral candidates at the date of recruitment, i.e. not already in possession of a doctoral degree at the deadline of the open calls. Researchers who have successfully defended their doctoral thesis but have not yet formally awarded the doctoral degree will not be considered eligible. Candidates must hold a degree that allows admission to the official doctoral programme at UAB.
Additional requirements for a stronger application are:

• Background in relevant social science discipline (e.g., sociology, demography, psychology, public health, economics, human development, neuroscience);
• Excellent academic record to date;
• Exceptional skills in quantitative methods and advanced statistical modelling (e.g., longitudinal methods, structural equation modelling, multi-level methods, causal inference designs);
• Strong potential to provide novel scientific understandings of the links between social media use and young people’s mental health;
• High proficiency in relevant statistical software (e.g., R, Stata, Python);
• Willingness to innovate using pioneering and interdisciplinary quantitative and computational methods;
• Excellent written and verbal skills in English language;
• Ambition and ability to produce and publish high-quality research in social sciences;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact the investigators for further information .Interested applicants should apply through the TOUCH online platform by submitting a full CV, a motivation letter, two letters of recommendation and academic and English level certificates. The call will be open from the 1st of February to the 31st of March 2025. More information about the TOUCH project, the recruitment process, and the application platform are available on the TOUCH website.Where to apply WebsiteRequirementsResearch Field Sociology Education Level Master Degree or equivalentResearch Field Demography Education Level Master Degree or equivalentResearch Field Psychological sciences Education Level Master Degree or equivalentResearch Field Medical sciences » Health sciences Education Level Master Degree or equivalentResearch Field Neurosciences Education Level Master Degree or equivalentLanguages ENGLISH Level ExcellentAdditional InformationWork Location(s)Number of offers available 1 Company/Institute Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Country Spain GeofieldContact State/ProvinceCatalonia CityCerdanyola del Valles – Barcelona WebsiteStreetCampus Bellaterra – Edifici Rectorat Postal Code08193STATUS: EXPIREDShare this page

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Location

Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona

Job date

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 23:19:22 GMT

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