The Department of Sociology at Trinity College is offering a stipend for an outstanding doctoral student to join the PhD in Sociology degree programme for a period of 48 months. The person appointed will conduct an innovative PhD project on a) social attitudes to taxation and social spending or b) migration and employment. We are seeking applicants who are motivated to work on one of the following two streams of research, funded by the department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin:
Stream 1: Social Attitudes to Taxation and Social Spending
The person appointment will conduct a PhD project on social attitudes to taxation and social spending in Ireland, with potential for a cross-national comparison. The project builds on existing research in the inter-disciplinary field of fiscal sociology, as well as sociological research on welfare attitudes. The study will investigate how institutional arrangements, cultures, values, beliefs, interests and knowledge influence the attitudes of different social groups. It uses a multi-method qualitative case-study design to gather data from social groups, with potential for the integration of mixed methods research. Questions to be examined include but are not limited to: How does political orientation interact with income and education in shaping tax attitudes? How do beliefs about the direction and efficiency of social spending impact tax attitudes? How do attitudes to immigration and taxation relate?
Stream 2: Open project on migration and employment
In this stream, applicants may propose their own research proposal, which connects to one of the following broad thematic fields in research on migration and employment:
Determinants of labour migration to specific destinations in Europe.
Migratory pathways into European labour markets from visa/permit applications to interactions with recruiters.
Employer formal and informal hiring strategies.
The successful applicant will gain skills in project management, research communication and policy-oriented research practice.