PhD at Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research focusing on alcohol addiction and recovery

PhD position at Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research focusing on alcohol addiction and recovery

Aarhus BSS Graduate School, Aarhus University invites applicants for a PhD Scholarship in connection with the research project “The lived realities and embodied experiences of alcohol addiction and recovery” at the PhD Programme Psychology and Behavioural Science at Department of Psychology and Behavioural Science. The position is available from 1 February 2027.

The research project

The Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research invites applications for a PhD position focusing on alcohol addiction and recovery.

The position offers the opportunity to take part in an engaging research environment as the position forms part of a larger research project called “The lived realities and embodied experiences of alcohol addiction and recovery” headed by Associate professor Esben Houborg and financed by Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Addiction and recovery are significant individual and societal challenges with consequences for health, family life, employment, and social participation. Despite extensive research, there remains a lack of knowledge about the embodied (lived, bodily) experiences of addiction and recovery.

The overall aim of the project is to generate new knowledge about how individuals experience alcohol addiction and recovery, with particular attention to craving, loss of control, and the processes through which people move into and out of addiction. The project combines narrative and phenomenological approaches to better understand addiction as a bodily, emotional, and social phenomenon.

The project consists of four work packages:

• A scoping literature review,
• narrative life-course interviews,
• micro-phenomenological interviews,
• practice development through change lab sessions

The research group

The project is based at the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University, in collaboration with the Research Centre for Social Marginalization (FSU), VIA University College, Aarhus. The project team includes researchers with expertise in addiction, qualitative methods, and practice development. The PhD student will be supervised by Associate Professor Esben Houborg (PI), in collaboration with the project team. The project also includes both an international and a national advisory board consisting of leading experts and stakeholders in addiction research and treatment.

The proposed PhD project should contribute to advancing knowledge about alcohol addiction and recovery from the perspective of individuals with lived experience and be aligned with the overall research framework of the project. Relevant topics may include personal and social processes of change, everyday life in relation to addiction and recovery, identity, relationships, meaning-making, and the broader implications of lived experiences for understanding and supporting recovery processes. Applicants are encouraged to develop their own theoretical, methodological, and empirical focus within this framework.

Under the supervision of the Principal Investigator (PI), who will serve as the main PhD supervisor, the successful candidate will actively contribute to the empirical, analytical, and theoretical development of the overall project. The PhD project will primarily contribute to the qualitative empirical components of the research programme, including the exploration of lived and embodied experiences of addiction and recovery, thereby supporting the achievement of the project's overall objectives.

Core tasks could include:

• Conducting qualitative interviews, both narrative and micro-phenomenological interviews focusing on embodied experiences such as craving, loss of control, withdrawal, and recovery processes.
• Contributing to recruitment of participants in alcohol treatment.
• Participating in data analysis (coding and thematic analysis using NVivo).
• Contributing to the integration of findings across narrative and phenomenological data.
• Participating in project meetings, advisory board interactions, and collaborative research activities.
• Disseminating research findings in international journals and conferences.

While the PhD project is to be carried out as part of the overall research project, the PhD student´s exact role in the project will depend on the chosen candidate and his / her own PhD project description. Hence, you must write a project description on how you would carry out the research within the frames of the overall project.

We are looking for a candidate with:

• A relevant Master’s degree in sociology, anthropology, psychology, public health, or related social science disciplines.
• Strong interest in addiction research and qualitative methodologies.
• Experience with qualitative methods