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Funding, job satisfaction, motivation, and psychological vulnerability of academic and non-academic staff – these are just some of the topics experts from the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Education of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (FPE UWB) and mathematician Gustavo Carrero from Athabasca University in Canada will focus on.

The project, titled Working Conditions and Psychological Vulnerability in Czech and Austrian Academic Staff, draws on data from around 2,700 respondents and aims to identify risk factors related to job satisfaction, motivation, and mental health among employees.

"The project responds to the ongoing public debate about working conditions in higher education. In the Czech context, a major issue is insufficient funding and the negative impact of structural shortcomings on university employees themselves. The goal of the project is to comprehensively map working conditions in the higher education environment," explained the project’s principal investigator, Ivana Mašková from the Department of Psychology at FPE.

Canadian mathematician Gustavo Carrero, a long-term collaborator on the project, focuses on the unconventional integration of computational methods and psychology, specifically modeling in the areas of biological and psychological phenomena.

"Working on this project with the department is absolutely unique for me—not only because of the quantity and quality of the data collected but also due to its potential practical impact. In addition to structural modeling used to analyze various types of influences, we also plan to employ advanced mathematical and statistical methods, such as neural network modeling, which can capture very complex relationships between variables. This approach will allow us to thoroughly compare results between the two countries and between academic and non-academic staff," said Carrero.

The collaboration between Carrero and FPE will also continue with Peter Malinowski from Liverpool John Moores University, who conducts research on mindfulness. "Mindfulness has significant potential as a psychological intervention with both preventive and therapeutic effects in stress reduction and mental health support. Our department is currently developing mindfulness-based interventions designed for both students and staff," said Dana Buršíková, head of the Department of Psychology.

In May, Carrero was also a guest at the Faculty of Applied Sciences at UWB, where he gave a lecture titled Unfolding the Beauty of Broken Tulips through Mathematical Modelling. "He explained to the audience how the formation of striping on the petals of tulips infected with mosaic virus can be described using mathematical modeling," added Gabriela Holubová from the Department of Mathematics.