PhD Candidate for project on Football video games and race

Introduction

The Erasmus School of History, Culture, and Communication (ESHCC) at Erasmus University Rotterdam is excited to offer a challenging and innovative PhD position on meanings given to race in football video game cultures. The project is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

The PhD project will focus on the popular practice of football video gaming that engages many millions of young people worldwide. The popularity of football video gaming applies especially to the ‘EA FC’ game, formerly known as the ‘FIFA game’. Its popularity positions the game as an informal learning site for ideas about societal issues. This includes ideas about race and ethnicity, given the racial/ethnic diversity of the digital players in the game. EA FC assigns meanings to the racially diverse (digital) players but in a different way from mainstream sports media, which requires new research.

Such research should not only attend to the actual content of the game but also to its development/production, and to how streamers, as influential figures in gaming culture, shape their community’s perceptions and attitudes of in-game footballers. The question of relevance in this project is what messages about race and ethnicity are conveyed to those engaged in football video gaming and how these messages are developed by game developers and shaped by players who stream the EA FC game content.

To further boost its impact, the project will also explore football video gaming as a site of change. Specifically, we aim to cooperate with the industry to further foster football video gaming's inclusionary potential, using a practical intervention which we call ‘equity conversation'.
Data collection in the project will combine content analysis (of game content), interviews, and participant observations (with/amongst game professionals), amongst other things.

The candidate will be appointed for a period of four years. The main location will be Rotterdam but an important part of the data collection should also take place in Vancouver and Bucharest.

Job description

The successful candidate will be based at the Department of Media and Communication of the ESHCC and will carry out the following tasks:  

Research (0.85 fte) 

• Conducting PhD research. 
• Engaging and cooperating with the main stakeholders within the domain of football video gaming
• Publishing and presenting research results in the form of articles in international peer reviewed journals and papers at international conferences. 
• Disseminating research findings to a wider audience (e.g. via a MOOC, a podcast, presentations at schools).
• Writing a dissertation within the appointment duration of four years. 
• Taking part in seminars, workshops etc. that are organized by the Erasmus Research Institute for Media, Culture, History and Society (ERMeCHS), the Department of Media and Communication, and ERMeCHS’s established research clusters such as Popular Culture and Inequality (PCI) and Virtual Environments, Games and Society (VEGAS). 

Teaching (0.15 fte) 

• Performing junior teaching tasks in the BA or MA degree programmes in the field of Media and Communication provided by ESHCC, primarily through tutorial group teaching.

Job requirements

To be eligible, a candidate must have:

• A Master’s degree in the Social Sciences or Humanities, preferably a research master;
• Wide-ranging knowledge of and affinity with game studies, media studies, sociology of sport, cultural studies and race/ethnicity studies;
• Proven familiarity with and keen interest in social science research methods (mainly qualitative but preferably also quantitative or mixed-methods);
• Independent thinking and critical analytical skills;
• Good collaboration and interpersonal skills (connecting and working with game professionals as well as streaming collectives is an important part of the research);
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, especially in English (CEFR C1);
• The ability and commitment to carry out high level research and publish in renowned peer reviewed international journals.

Employment conditions and benefits

We offer you an internationally oriented and varied job in an enthusiastic team, with excellent working conditions in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU).

The start date of this position is between 1 December 2025 and 1 January 2026 and you will be based at campus Woudestein in the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC). This position is for 1 FTE. The salary is dependent on your experience and knowledge and ranges from a minimum of € 3.059 to a maximum of € 3.881 gross per month (scale PhD) on a fulltime basis (38 hours), in accordance with the CAO-NU. The duration of the initial contract is 18 months and will be extended with another 30 months upon good evaluation and unchanged organizational circumstances.

Everything else we offer you; you can find below!

- Everything you need for a good work-life balance: the option to work from home in consultation with your manager, 41 days of paid leave with a 40 hour contract, 8% holiday pay and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus, and a significant discount on a subscription for our on-campus sports centre!

- Sustainable, inclusive and diverse work environment with an open culture, where you can be yourself and we pay attention to each other and to the world around us. Make the most of our bicycle budget, or join networks such as Young@EUR, FAME or QuEUR.

- Time and space for your development in the broadest sense: development days and a personal career budget and free access to our university library.

- Good pension with ABP that EUR contributes 2/3rds towards, discounts on various collective insurances with Zilveren Kruis Achmea, Loyalis, and Allianz, and compensation for travel, working from home and home internet use.

- Are you currently combining your job with parenthood, or do you want to do so in the future? EUR offers partially paid parental leave and fully paid additional birth leave for partners, and our campus features a daycare (daycare not paid for by EUR).

- Moving to the Netherlands for your job with EUR? Then you may be eligible for the 30%-ruling if you meet the requirements of the Belastingdienst (Dutch tax agency), and with our Dual Career Programme we will also help your partner find the right job for them.

Employer

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is an internationally oriented university with a strong social orientation in its education and research, as expressed in our mission ‘Creating positive societal impact’. EUR is home to 4.100 academics and professionals and almost 33.000 students from more than 140 countries. Everything we do, we do under the credo The Erasmian Way – Making Minds Matter. We’re global citizens, connecting, entrepreneurial, open-minded, and socially involved. These Erasmian Values function as our internal compass and create EUR’s distinctive and recognizable profile. From these values, with a broad perspective and with an eye for diversity, different backgrounds and opinions, our employees work closely together to solve societal challenges from the dynamic and cosmopolitan city of Rotterdam. Thanks to the high quality and positive societal impact of our research and education, EUR can compete with the top European universities. www.eur.nl.

Faculty / Institute / Central service

The Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) is part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The school has three departments: History,  Arts and Culture and Media & Communication. There are approximately 2500 students and 220 employees.

ESHCC offers high quality education, based on scientific research, at the intersection of the Humanities and Social Sciences. We teach our ambitious, Dutch and international students in a stimulating learning environment. After graduation, they will have acquired the knowledge, insight and skills to make an important and inspiring contribution to an increasingly international society in which diversity plays a major role.

The ESHCC also has an ambitious research agenda. We want to strengthen our involvement in multidisciplinary research, expand the share of external funding in our total research funding and increase our social impact. ESHCC is working towards one research institute, the Erasmus Institute for Media, Culture, History and Society (ERMeCHS).

ERMeCHS (Erasmus Research Institute for Media, Culture, History & Society) is a research centre located within the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The Centre was founded in 2023, as a merger of former research centres ERMeCC and History@Erasmus, by members of the Departments of Media and Communication, Arts and Culture Studies and History. Researchers at the Centre are dedicated to carrying out interdisciplinary research on media, communication, culture, history, and society.

Department

The Media and Communication Department is a dynamic, internationally oriented department within the ESHCC. The department offers five international degree programmes: the International Bachelor’s programme in Communication and Media (IBCoM), four international Master’s programmes in Media Studies (Media & Business, Media & Creative Industries, Media, Culture & Society, Digitalisation, Surveillance & Society) and the Research master in the Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts. The department has close ties with ERMeCHS.

Additional information

About Erasmus University Rotterdam

About Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication

About the Department of Media and Communication

About ERMeCHS

Applying

Additional information about the vacancy can be obtained from prof.dr. Jacco van Sterkenburg sterkenburg@eshcc.eur.nl .

To apply, please submit (1) your motivation letter of max. 1 page, (2) your resume including publication list (if applicable) and the names and contact details of two potential references (no letters of recommendation are required at this stage), (3) a brief (and original/innovative) research project idea of max. 300 words ultimately  on 7 October 2025.

The selection committee will invite a small number of candidates for an (online) interview. Candidates may be asked to submit a more detailed research plan and/or give a presentation as part of the application procedure.

The first round of interviews will take place before the end of October.

We look forward to receiving your application.

Persons of all gender identities or expressions, sexual orientations, religions, ethnicities, ages, neurodiversities, functional impairments, citizenships, or any other aspect are welcome to apply and join the EUR community