Andrew Reid#PhD positions in behavioural sciences offered at Radboud University Nijmegen Behavioural Sciences Institute!
Can highly recommend this university, city, country!
Luke@AndrewReid I had a great time in Nijmegen as a postdoc back in the 90s, and passed by during an ultra bike race in 2018, happy times... 🙂
El Duvelle@AndrewReid I actually love when people recommend a specific country for doing research and, I assume, living long-term… what do you particularly like about the Netherlands? 🇳🇱
@elduvelle Hi, sorry I missed this!
We've just moved back to NL, actually, so I'm noticing what I missed most about the country. I love:
- The biking culture. Bikes are ubiquitous and the traffic infrastructure is designed with them as a central component. Virtually everybody bikes, and it is super convenient to be able to go where you want without having to drive there. Not to mention healthy!
- The cafe culture. Cafes in NL typically serve food, coffee, wine, beer. They often include a outdoor "terras" and the more traditional ones are oriented towards the street so patrons can people watch. They also have dedicated beer cafes with hundreds of varieties from around the world. Cafes pride themselves on being "gezellig" (nearest translation is "cozy" or "sociable")
@elduvelle Also:
- The towns and cities. There are so many to explore, with wonderful old buildings but also well considered, modern infrastructures. There is a huge respect here for heritage, and as the result the cities maintain their old beauty while still being modern and highly livable. There is also a love for small shops, restaurants, open markets, etc., which means there are vibrant shopping streets and marketplaces where you can get cheese, bread, meat, chocolate, etc. They also have streets full of chain stores that are virtually the same in every city lol, but the mix is pretty good.
- The politics. It's a proportional representation system here, which really seems to be an improvement over other forms of democracy. That may just be a cultural thing, but I'm not sure! Generally very socially oriented here, which means high taxes but also an excellent healthcare system, great infrastructure, low homelessness, etc, etc
@elduvelle I could go on, you've opened a bit of a pandora's box I'm afraid 😅
@AndrewReid Please do go on if you have anything to add! How are they on the ecological front? And childcare? What about research funding? And what kind of permanent position in research can you get there? Also is the language difficult to learn? (I am not expecting you to answer all of these :) )
@elduvelle We've got our kid in childcare now. It's not super cheap, but there is a government subsidy that helps a bit. Depending on the city there may be a wait list, but we found three with space on fairly short notice, so... The quality of the childcare is pretty good!
Research funding is a mixed bag. There is a focus on "excellence", both here and Europe generally. That means many grants are personal career grants with time-since-PhD limitations. These are quite competitive but also quite generous if you get one. There are analogous European-wide (European Research Council) excellence grants.
I'm beyond the limits so no longer excellent 😅. However, it seems things are shifting and universities are getting more money directly to distribute to their research staff. They are experimenting here with things like lotteries as an alternative to competitions. I like this trend 🤓
@elduvelle As for learning Dutch, it does have many similarities to English, so if this is your first language that can be helpful (although Germans seem to learn it much more quickly). The biggest impediment is actually that so many people here speak excellent English, that you have to really insist on struggling though a conversation in Dutch in order to really learn.
@AndrewReid Thanks a lot for all of these! Super useful!!