Aix-Marseille University offers funding for a three-year Ph.D. studentship on the project “Team decisions in complex situations: defense organization in volleyball”. The project will study the factors that determine how players in a volleyball game decide among the defenders who will be the receiver/passer, how this decision is shared among the players, and how the receiving player’s interception of the approaching serve is controlled. The volleyball situation is taken to represent situations in which multiple agents need to collaborate in dynamic and demanding situations, thus creating a paradigm to study natural decision making, considering the control and affordance aspects in combination. Experiments will involve the collection of 3D-position data of players and ball on a regular-size volleyball field.

The ideal candidate
- has a strong background in Human Movement Sciences, Sport Sciences, Ergonomics, or Psychology,
- has experience with experimental studies from a Perception-Action perspective and/or Decision Making,
- has strong programming skills (preferably MATLAB or similar software), and
- is willing to be part of a French-Dutch collaboration.

The project is based on an international collaboration, involving the Institute for Movement Sciences (ISM, UMR CNRS 7278) and the Research Centre in the Psychology of Cognition, Language, and Emotion (PsyCLE, EA 3273) in Marseille and the Centre for Human Movement Sciences in Groningen. Supervisors will be Prof. Bootsma (Marseille, France), Prof. Bonnardel (Marseille, France), and Prof. Zaal (Groningen, The Netherlands). Time will be shared between Aix-Marseille and Groningen. Potentially, a double degree from Aix-Marseille University and the University of Groningen will be offered.

The net salary (available after deduction of social charges and taxes) offered is 1450€ to 1650€ a month. Financial assistance will be provided for travel between the two universities.



Applications, including a CV and a letter of motivation, should be addressed by e-mail to Prof. Reinoud Bootsma (reinoud.bootsma@univ-amu.fr) before July 10, 2013.