Postdoctoral research
Welcome to our postdoctoral research community! As a postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University, you will primarily focus on advancing your research expertise and contributing to innovative projects. You may also have opportunities to engage in teaching, mentorship, and collaborative initiatives across various departments. Our university offers a dynamic environment where you can enhance your skills, explore new research directions, and build a strong foundation for your future career. Whether you are looking to specialize in a specific field, collaborate with leading scholars, or transition into industry, we invite you to explore the diverse opportunities available to you here.
Helpful information
Practical information
For those joining Maastricht University from abroad, the International Staff Support Office provides helpful information for relocation and integration. General practical information for all staff is available on the university's employee support page.
Training and development
The Talent Development Centre offers a range of training programs and career coaching for postdocs. This includes the Leadership Academy and Self leadership initiative.
The Language Centre provides courses in Dutch, English, and academic writing.
The university library offers workshops on topics such as systematic reviews, open access publishing, open science, research software, and FAIR data management.
Research support
Each faculty has a Research Support Office (RSO) with funding officers who can assist with various tasks, including support during funding applications, ongoing research, and policy advice. A list of funding advisors is available on the university intranet.
Recognition & Rewards
Maastricht University (UM) aims to ensure every employee has a fulfilling career in which their talents are used, recognised and valued. UM strives to be an open, inclusive and diverse community of academic citizens who are rewarded based on their own merits.
Alongside other public academic institutions and research funds (UNL, NFU, KNAW, NOW and ZonMW) UM is changing the system through which we assess the achievements of our academic staff. In 2019, we jointly published a position paper, Room for Everyone’s Talent, focusing on modernising the Dutch university system. We translated the position paper into an extensive Recognition & Rewards (R&R) programme in which all Dutch universities participate.
Cross border work policies
If you are employed by Maastricht University and (continue to) live in Belgium or Germany during your employment in the Netherlands, you are a ‘cross-border worker’. Your situation may significantly change in terms of taxation and social security. Read more about our cross-border work policy here!
Ethics and integrity
At UM, we highly value integrity and ethically responsible research. We strive to maintain scientific integrity and make decisions based on high ethical standards for research involving human participants, personally identifiable data, or animal testing.
If you teach or do research at UM, you share in the responsibility for maintaining academic integrity. Our academic staff are expected to adhere to the general principles of professional academic practice at all times.
UM endorses the principles of professional scientific conduct as expressed in the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity and has established its Regulation for Scientific Integrity at UM. This complies with the overarching UM Integrity Code of Conduct.
PostdocNL platform
Post-doctoral researchers make up a large part of the scientific workforce in academia. However, they are often quite invisible as a group for policy makers. To address this on a national level, the Postdoc-NL platform has been initiated, with the goal of uniting and representing post-doctoral researchers from all backgrounds and knowledge institutions in The Netherlands.
Postdoc-NL aims to serve as an advocate for post-doctoral researchers, and its mission is to improve the issues that they experience.