Doctoral candidate

The DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education offers empirical research, digital infrastructures and knowledge transfer thus contributing to tackling challenges in education. Located in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, DIPF generates and documents knowledge of education and thus supports politicians, practitioners.

The Cognitive Development unit at the Department for Education and Human Development at DIPF is taking part in the LOEWE centre DYNAMIC and seeking to appoint:

75% of the regular hours per week, for 36 months, salary EG 13 collective bargaining agreement in the state of Hesse (TV-H), starting as soon as possible

The post is located in Frankfurt am Main.

Mental illness is one of the most aggravating and consequential disorders. Therefore, researchers at DIPF and researchers from the Universities of Gießen, Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt and the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neurosciences (ESI) – led by Philipps University of Marburg under the umbrella of the LOEWE Centre DYNAMIC, will study and develop new approaches to therapy. In DYNAMIC, scientists from psychology, psychiatrics, statistics, and computer science are jointly working on the vision of reaching a better understanding of mental health disorders. We are using multimodal data to characterise mental difficulties with dynamic network models. At DIPF, a partial project of DYNAMIC is processed by the Cognitive Development unit at the Department for Education and Human Development. The Department for Education and Human Development assesses individual and differential developments of individual people in educational contexts. The Cognitive Development unit investigates intra-individual variability of cognitive performance and emotional well-being and relevant influential factors in everyday (school) life. The DYNAMIC partial project at DIPF will focus on transition processes (e.g., school entry). Such transitions represent critical life events, which go along with adaptation processes of the dynamic relations between different factors related to mental health. In this partial project, Ecological Momentary Assessment will be used to assess longitudinal change in children and adolescents with respect to socio-emotional network dynamics in the context of transitions.

Your tasks

• You will conduct your own doctoral study on the network approach in children and adolescents.
• You will conceptualise, plan, and analyse studies on dynamic networks in children and adolescents using Ecological Momentary Assessment
• Documentation and publishing of findings (English language journal articles, contributions to conferences)

Your profile

• University degree (Diploma, Master or similar) in Psychology
• Experience in and sound knowledge of statistical analyses of scientific data with complex software (e.g., R or Mplus), ideally experience with dynamic network models of time-series data
• Experience in assessing and analysing complex datasets, ideally by means of longitudinal data from Ecological Momentary Assessment
• Interest in interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration in a large-scale research network with different support structures
• Knowledge of developmental psychology
• Interest in working at the interface between clinical psychology and developmental psychology and interest in educational research questions
• You will be expected to work autonomously, be highly motivated, possess very good communication and cooperation skills
• You speak English and German well
• Interest in collaborating with clinical partners from child and youth psychiatry wards and psychotherapy and clinical child and youth psychotherapy

We expect you to be able to become quickly acquainted with other areas of work. We offer intensive introductions to the tasks and close supervision. You can expect your work to be interesting and diverse, you will be part of a dynamic national network.

DIPF offers a nursery and flexible hours of work thus chances for harmonising work and family commitments are good. Employees can purchase a job ticket for public transport at a reasonable price.

At DIPF, equal opportunities are endorsed for all employees and the institute welcomes applicants regardless of their beliefs, cultural or social background, age, denomination, worldview, disability, gender and sexual identity. Candidates with a registered disability will be particularly considered. People can principally reduce working hours if in line with the post's demands.

For further information, you can contact Professor Dr Florian Schmiedek – please call 069/ or e-mail

Please submit your written application with the usual documents in electronic format, pdf file, quoting the reference number BiEn by , to:

Prof. D.r Florian Schmiedek

Rostocker Straße 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main