PhD Social Psych Cultural Gender Beliefs and Support for Gender-affirming Care

4-Year PhD in Social/Cultural Psychology of Gender
Passionate about researching culture gender and support for gender-diverse people
Join Gender-InSIGHT an interdisciplinary doctoral network. This 4-year Social/Cultural Psychology PhD will examine how cultural beliefs about gender shape support for transgender and gender-diverse individuals. Apply if you enjoy ambitious collaborative research are keen to develop statistical skills and want your work to inform policy. Startdate: June 1st 2026.

Become a PhD student in the Gender-InSIGHT consortium

Gender-InSIGHT is an international network for the Investigation of biopsychoSocial Influences on Gender during (diverse) Hormonal Transitions. The network brings together a range of disciplines including psychology history ethics endocrinology neuroscience and public health. The projects will increase our understanding of the influence of biopsychosocial factors during hormonal transitions such as puberty and menopause both in the general population in people with variations of sex characteristics and in trans and gender diverse individuals. Historical clinical and societal lenses will focus attention on different aspects. The societal lens (which this project is part of) will uncover societal pressures and polarisation regarding the biopsychosocial nature of gender and how these are communicated across cultures and through different channels. Collaborating with a range of partners from the non-academic domain the project aims to have a lasting impact on culture and media healthcare and public policy.

Gender-InSIGHT consists of 15 doctoral projects all of which are now open for applications (you can find a list of all projects at ). Although you should submit a primary application for only ONE project you can also indicate interest in up to four additional projects (in order of preference in your motivation letter).

This PhD project (Cross-cultural gender beliefs and support for gender-affirming care DC 14)
will aim to:

1. Conceptualize and document how people in different countries think about the nature of gender (i.e. differing lay theories of gender that may be based on uniformity innateness immutability sacredness etc.).
2. Examine how these cultural lay theories of gender alongside other cultural factors shape the general publics support for TGD individuals and different forms of gender-affirming care (e.g. hormones vs. surgery; government funding for gender-affirming care; etc.).

What are you going to do

• Map the evidence base by conducting a scoping review of cross-cultural lay theories of gender
• Conceptualize plan and manage a large-scale cross-cultural survey study to document how people understand gender and where key differences cluster.
• Learn and apply complex statistical analyses to test what predicts support for gender-affirming care by linking lay theories and other cultural factors to attitudes toward different forms of care (e.g. hormones vs. surgery public funding).
• Translate findings into real-world outputs through a secondment (internship) with TGEU producing a tailored report for policymakers advocates and professionals working on gender-affirming care.

What you should offer as a candidate
The following are the requirements for this position:

• Candidates should NOT have resided in the Netherlands for more than 12 months during the 3 years prior to June 1st 2026 (MSCA mobility rule). This rule is not negotiable.
• You have a Masters degree in psychology or a closely related quantitative social science by May 31st 2026
• You have a passion for researching gender culture and LGBTQ issues.
• A major in social or cultural psychology OR at least completed course work in social and/or cultural psychology
• Experience with basic statistical analyses (R SPSS or similar) and willingness to learn complex analyses
• Strong organizational skill and willingness to coordinate large projects
• Excellent higher education track record
• Fluent spoken and written English skills
• We value diverse applications particularly from populations that are historically underrepresented in higher education and/or marginalised because of an intersection of race ethnicity sexual orientation sex and/or gender.

What else do we offer you

You will be conducting research and completing a PhD thesis within the period of the appointment.

We offer a temporary full-time position of 38 hours a week for a term of 4 years. The teaching load for PhD candidates is 5% equating to teaching a small number of tutorials or supervising 2 Bachelor/Masters theses a year. The initial employment is for one year. Following a positive assessment and barring altered circumstances this term will be extended by a maximum of 36 months which should result in the conferral of a doctorate. The starting date is June 1st 2026 (with little room for negotiation given grant rules). We will put together a curriculum which will also include the opportunity to attend training courses and both national and international conferences.

You will work here

The Social Psychology programme group at the University of Amsterdam is a large international and vibrant community of PhD candidates postdocs and professors within the Department of Psychology. The PhD candidate working on this project will be supervised by Dr. Katharina Block (primary supervisor) with Dr. Bertjan Doosje as promoter and Dr. Thomas Morton (University of Copenhagen) as external supervisor. The candidate will be embedded in the Amsterdam Culture and Intergroup Dynamics Lab ( a group of scholars focused on understanding how cultural dynamics shape processes such as gender roles polarization and intergroup conflict. As part of the Gender-InSIGHT consortium the candidate will also have the opportunity to collaborate with researchers from other disciplines as well as with practitioners.