Dear colleagues
Please disseminate this announcement to your students! Note that it is  
possible to apply for a shorter period inside the 2010-2013 time slot

Yours


J P Roos
Professor, director of the PhD school in Social Policy
University of Helsinki

  EIGHT FOUR-YEAR PhD STUDENT POSITIONS IN SOCIAL POLICY


  The Finnish Graduate school in Social policy announces eight PhD  
positions (financed by the Academy of Finland) beginning from Jan 1st,  
2010. The deadline for applications is 31.8.2009. The criteria for  
filling the positions are: previous successful studies, publications,  
research plan (in social policy, according to the profile of the  
VASTUU graduate school, section 2.6. in the application, see below).  
The candidates should have a completed MA.
Shorter than 4-year appointments are possible if the applicant can be  
expected to finish his/her
studies in a shorter time. There will be a midterm evaluation of the  
applicants and in case of major deviations from research plan, the  
appointment may be cut short. The applicants will be evaluated
using referees.  The pay is determined by the Academy of Finland and  
is presently about 1880 €/month.
  The required application documents are: a research plan, Portfolio  
(CV and list of publications). Foreign students who are not students  
in Finnish universities should present certified documents concerning  
their study certificates.
All Finnish university departments of Social Policy are members of the  
graduate school and it is coordinated by the Department of Social and  
Public Policy at the University of Helsinki. There are no fees
for University studies in Finland. The foreign applicants should  
indicate in which Finnish university they wish to pursue their  
studies. They should also indicate the time period for which they wish  
to apply the position (it may be shorter than four years and start  
later than Jan 1st 2009).
The announcement and additional information is available at
www.soc.utu.fi/projektit/sosiaalipolitiikka/sospolnet/index.php_

Additional information may also be given by Professor J. P. Roos  
(j.p.roos(at)helsinki.fi) or Professor Veli-Matti Ritakallio  
(vemari(at)utu.fi)
The applications must be sent to the Department of Social Policy,  
University of Helsinki, either by mail: Department of Soxcial Policy,  
Snellmaninkatu 10, PL18, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, or by  
e-mail: to j.p.roos (at) helsinki.fi  by 6 pm, August 31st, 2009.

Appendix:
2.6  Vastuu Profile

We mean by a need for a school on social policy an orientation which  
emphasizes theoretical orientations which are relevant for practical,  
existing social policies. In our view most of sociological and some  
social policy theories have distanced themselves from actual social  
policies and their preconditions so that they cannot be really used  
for evaluating or proposing policies. Only a theory which produces  
hypotheses and assumptions which can be empirically analyzed and  
compared is useful for social policy purposes.

The data concerning outcomes of social policies and their  
preconditions are nowadays so extensive that it is already impossible  
to grasp and make coherent use of it.  There is urgent need of  
development and unification of existing theories. There are several  
competing frames of reference, some of which produce absolutely  
contradictory outcomes.
The special quality of the VASTUU graduate school is that it is based  
on one broad discipline, social policy. This discipline is one of the  
original disciplines of the new faculty of social sciences in the  
University of Helsinki and in a sense a Finnish specialty that has  
evolved since the mid 1940s as an academic discipline and a scientific  
society with about one thousand members. On the other hand social  
policy in Finland is growing in importance for several reasons:
- Welfare state in Finland is in transition due the various trade-offs  
between demographic change, competitiveness and equality resulting in  
demand for research that can either assess the consequences of these  
changes or to contribute for current policies. In order to be able to  
do so, we shall need well-trained researchers with reasonable good  
knowledge on the institutions of welfare state, their adjustments and  
welfare consequences. In particular, we need scholars capable to deal  
with issues like financing, cost-shifting, flexicurity, innovation  
diffusion, the adaptive efficiency of technologies and institutions,  
poverty and income distribution; furthermore, there is a clear need  
for up-dating current theories of well-being and welfare, including  
those inspired by evolutionary psychology and subjective welfare  
theories, and systematically apply them to various empirical data  
sets, in order to generate theories that apply well to affluent  
societies.
- The one major interest of the graduate school will be to study  
poverty and precarisation both quantitatively and qualitatively. Old  
and new risks as well as accumulation of risks will also be addressed.
- The integration of European union and the globalisation of various  
social policies (e.g. Copenhagen process on social development, the  
Beijing process on gender equality, the Cairo process of demography,  
and numerous poverty reduction strategies) has resulted in need for  
multi-governance and comparative research not yet available to a  
sufficient degree. In particular, we need scholars capable to deal  
with various methods of multi-level governance (e.g. those of Lisbon  
strategy, strategy for sustainable development, the OMC in social  
protection and immigration, and global dimension of European  
policies). In many ways, these are the issues of national interests.
- One of the special orientations of the Graduate School will be  
Global Social Policy and eradicating worldwide social inequalities,  
this is an increasingly important task which has to be addressed.  
Globalisation and economic growth is currently leading to considerable  
social changes, structural transitions and human mobilities throughout  
the world. These need to be addressed thoroughly not only considering  
their economic and ecological impacts, but also in terms of social  
risk, social justice and global social policies. More in particular  
the VASTUU graduate school focuses - with critical reflection - on  
implications of global social policy programmes, such as the  
Millennium goals, on the national and international social policy  
schemes, social policy institutions and international co-operation  
related to the implementation of sustainable development. Global  
social policy implies successful international and multilayered  
governance. The VASTUU graduate school will contribute to the  
education of a new generation of social policy experts qualified to  
take action in both local and global context of social policy.


-- 
www.jproos.fi