PhD researcher at the Department of Work and Organisation Studies (WOS) (ref. BAP-2025-328)

You will work in the stimulating Department of Work and Organisation Studies (WOS). WOS is an interdisciplinary group of about 50 scholars who combine different perspectives to the study of work. WOS aims to extend knowledge on employee wellbeing and quality of labour, Human Resource Management, leadership & organizational behaviour, careers & employability and organizations within society.

The Faculty of Economics and Business has four campuses, in Antwerp, Brussels, Kortrijk and Leuven. All are vibrant cities in the heart of Europe. This position is related to our campus in Leuven.

KU Leuven is a research-oriented institution and is the most innovative university of Europe (ranked first in Reuters ranking).

This vacancy is made possible by the Acerta research chair “AI at work”.

Unit website

Project

You will contribute to a scientific research project and write a PhD dissertation on the topic of AI-enabled job redesign. The central aim of the project is to investigate whether the introduction of AI tools can positively reshape the task content and design of jobs for workers, thereby supporting their self-efficacy, competence development, and opportunities for career progression.
Three potential foci will provide the backbone of this PhD: (1) bottom-up job crafting with the help of “off-the-shelf” generative AI tools; (2) top-down job redesign enabled by tailored AI-systems or workflow automation tools; and (3) top-down reallocation of tasks between jobs, supported by AI-systems for sharing knowledge between experts and non-expert workers. You will investigate this through questionnaire design and interventions, which will take place in real-world settings under experimental or quasi-experimental set-ups. The project will thus investigate how AI-adoption reshapes the internal division of labour within organizations, leading to changes in individual job design and the quality of work.
Bridging organizational science, I/O psychology, and labour economics, it explores how decisions about AI use at the individual or organizational level affect job design, task content, and ultimately job quality and economic opportunity for workers. The purpose of the project is to introduce theoretical insights and evidence based informed intervention designs grounded in Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory. We aim to understand how (bottom-up or top-down) AI adoption impacts job characteristics and employee outcomes (e.g., well-being, motivation, productivity). This research should generate actionable insights for organizations, policymakers, and scholars about the conditions under which AI can create “better” jobs.
 Your job will consist of the following activities:

• You develop the research project in collaboration with the research team o Collaborating with the research team to finalize research questions and study designs;o Conducting field research, which may include survey data collection and intervention research, along with potentially interviews, observational data, and process documentation;o Designing and implementing randomized field experiments and quasi-experiments in collaboration with partner organizations;o Writing scientific articles with the aim of publishing and including them in your dissertation;

• Active participation in (international) seminars and conferences;

• Successful completion of the PhD program of the Faculty of Economics and Business;

• Provision of educational support (e.g., supervision of master's theses, supervising and grading exams).
Duration of the project will be four years, counting from the first day of employment.

Profile

• You hold a master's degree in a Humanities and Social Sciences domain (e.g., Management, Psychology, Applied Economics, Business Engineering, Sociology, or other related fields);

• You have received at least two 'honours' (i.e., cum laude, distinction) mentions over the course of your higher education; The appointment of students finishing their master degree will be conditional upon receiving their final grades.

• You have demonstrable experience with or a strong interest in analysing quantitative or qualitative data and curious about field-experimental designs.

• You are a good writer, and you are not afraid of public speaking (e.g., delivering a conference presentation, teaching a class);

• Your written and spoken English is excellent. Excellent Dutch language skills are an advantage (since the data collection will be in Dutch);

• You are an intellectually curious, analytical 'idea person', with a knack for academic research and a proactive, self-directed approach to work.

Offer

We offer employment as a full-time doctoral researcher in a stimulating environment, where you will mainly work with the research team, consisting of Dr. Laura Nurski and Prof. Dr. Anja Van den Broeck. We want to take you through a process in which you grow as a scientist in performing and publishing rigorous and transparent scientific research that is relevant to practice (i.e. to organisations and employees). We also want to support you in your personal development and offer you the opportunity to gain teaching experience. The educational support includes supervision of a fixed number of bachelor’s and/or master’s theses, support during exams and (preparation of) lectures.
Starting date: as soon as possible, subject to approval by the doctoral committee (see https://admin.kuleuven.be/rd/d...), for a period of 4 years (pending positive evaluation after 12 months). Your main office will be in Leuven.
For more information on working at KU Leuven, see http://www.kuleuven.be/persone....