In his research, Buser primarily focuses on the connection between personality traits and career outcomes. He has, for instance, conducted a great deal of research into individual differences in competitiveness and how these are related to career choices. In his research, he integrates insights from economics, personality psychology and biology.

As a professor, Buser will continue to examine the connection between personality traits and career preferences, as well as how these traits are influenced by the environment someone grows up in. He will also actively contribute to the curricula of the Faculty of Economics and Business, the PPLE programme and the Research Master at the Tinbergen Institute.

About Thomas Buser

Buser was born in Basel, Switzerland. He has been an associate professor at the UvA since 2017. He is also a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. After obtaining his PhD in 2012, he spent a year as a postdoc at the TIER research institute, a collaboration between the UvA, Maastricht University and the University of Groningen that focuses on educational-economic research.

In 2019, Buser received an ERC Starting Grant for the project ‘Competition, Time Pressure, Public Speaking and Multitasking: The Role of Willingness and Ability to Cope with Pressure in Explaining Individual Differences and Inequality in Career Outcomes’. He won the Royal Netherlands Economic Association (KVS) medal in 2014 and the Christiaan Huygens science award in 2015 for his doctoral research at the UvA that he completed in 2012.