PhD: Impact evaluation of climate policies in agricultural and forest landscapes

Have you ever wondered how we can ensure that climate mitigation and adaptation policies are fair, coherent, and effective? Are you interested in applying state-of-the-art impact evaluation techniques to analyze how climate policies affect land use, GHG emissions, and biodiversity? Do you good communication skills in Spanish? Then this might be your next step!

Climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture and forestry represent a “wicked problem”, shaped by uncertainty, conflicting objectives, institutional fragmentation and time pressure. While the EU has set ambitious climate targets for 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050, progress in agriculture and forestry remains insufficient and current policy frameworks have not yet resulted in significant climate mitigation and adaptation results, or generated the systemic transformation needed.

This PhD position is part of the EU-Horizon project “Evidence-based pathways towards fair, coherent and effective climate policies for Europe’s agriculture and forestry (PolicyForClimate)”, which will develop tools and frameworks to enable policymakers and other stakeholders to design fair, coherent, and effective climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the EU. The project will use AI-assisted evidence synthesis, a policy-lab approach, and embedded case studies to offer a continuously updated evidence base on policy impacts, trade-offs, synergies, and spillovers.

Your research will focus on developing, applying, and validating a novel mixed-methods framework for ex-post impact evaluation of climate policies in forestry and agricultural landscapes. By combining state-of-the-art econometric techniques with qualitative participatory approaches, you will empirically analyze how climate policies have affected land use, GHG emissions, and biodiversity metrics. This will require conducting systematic reviews on existing impact evaluation frameworks, run workshops and focus group discussions with various stakeholders, collect, combine, and analyze farm-level primary data and secondary spatially explicit data.

Start date: February 2027.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Conduct systematic literature reviews and workshops to develop a mixed-methods ex-post impact evaluation framework for climate policies;
• Apply rigorous econometric methods together with qualitative assessments, particularly from policy sciences, to evaluate the impact of specific climate policies on land cover, carbon, and biodiversity metrics;
• Conduct focus group discussions with various stakeholders in the EU to validate the proposed impact evaluation framework and results from the empirical analyses;
• Write research papers and present research findings at international academic conferences;
• Collaborate with our research partners and contribute to the dissemination of project results.

You will work here
You will be based at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group (FNP) at Wageningen University. The FNP group focuses on the political, socio-economic and cultural dimensions of forests and nature. Our research addresses major challenges including biodiversity conservation, deforestation, forest transitions, climate change and landscape management in both the Global North and Global South. You will be jointly supervised by Dr. Jorge Sellare and Prof. Bas Arts from Wageningen University (WU-FNP), and by Dr. Dario Schulz (EFI) in the research group headed by Sven Wunder.

Technician Natural Toxins

Are you enthusiastic about working in a laboratory? Would you like your work to contribute to the safety of our food? And would you enjoy doing this as part of a friendly team where people work hard and have fun together? Then we are looking for you!

We are looking for an enthusiastic and accurate Chemical Analyst (MBO level) who feels at home in a dynamic laboratory and enjoys getting hands-on. You will join the Natural Toxins team, where we analyse food samples every day to detect toxins produced by plants, fungi and algae. Your work therefore directly contributes to food safety for both humans and animals.

What will you do?
As a Chemical Analyst specialising in natural toxins, you will perform analyses using standardised protocols. A key part of your work will involve analyses using modern LC-(HR)MS/MS measurement systems. You will report your analytical and research results to the project leader. As an analyst, you will work as part of an analytical team responsible for efficiently carrying out and reporting the analyses.

Every morning, our laboratory receives a variety of samples that need to be tested for different toxins. You will independently carry out the analyses according to established protocols and report the measurement results at the end of the day. Your tasks and responsibilities will include:

• Creating a work schedule;
• Preparing and processing samples;
• Performing measurements using our modern LC-(HR)MS/MS systems;
• Processing and interpreting data.

Your team
You will join the Natural Toxins team, consisting of 23 colleagues who work every day to contribute to food safety. It is a professional team where collaboration, quality and enjoying your work are key

Pole Dance Instructor

Do you have a passion for sports, and for pole dancing in particular? Do you enjoy teaching others, and are you able to inspire a group of enthusiastic students? If so, we at Sports Center de Bongerd are looking for you!

For our university sports center, we are currently seeking a

Pole Dance Instructor
As a pole dance instructor, you are responsible for teaching two 1-hour classes per week on Thursdays from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The first class is for students with sports privileges who are taking a 4-week pole dance course. The second class is for members of WSPV Allegra, the student pole dance association in Wageningen.

Several times a year, you’ll attend teacher meetings, continuing education sessions, We-Day, AID, and/or staff outings outside of your regular working hours.

You will work here
The Sports Center de Bongerd (SCB) at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is responsible for the sports program for WUR students and staff. A total of 6,500 students and 900 staff members actively use the sports center, which is staffed by 45 specialized sports instructors and 9 management and administrative staff members. The SCB plays an initiating and active role in implementing the Vital@work health program.

The sports center is located on the edge of the campus and serves as the home base for various student sports clubs. Due to the large number of international students and staff, the primary language on campus is largely English.

PhD: The link between mountains, downstream agriculture and ecosystems globally

Are you interested in the role of mountains in the global hydrological cycle? And in what happens to downstream water supply when mountains change? Do you like working with numerical models? Then this PhD might be your next step!

A large part of the freshwater that sustains human societies is generated in the mountains. The seasonal melting of snow and ice supports agriculture, industries, households and the environment downstream. However, mountainous regions are changing rapidly, as they are hit hard by climate change. The impact of these changes on downstream water users is poorly understood. Global hydrological models rarely account for complex mountain processes. However, understanding how mountain processes influence global water availability is important to address sustainable water use.

We are looking for a PhD student who is interested in the link between changing mountain processes and increasing water use downstream. This position is part of the project ‘MountAInWater’ in which a consortium of international, interdisciplinary researchers collectively aims to answer the question How is the water supply from the world’s mountain ranges changing and which non-linear feedbacks may cause unprecedented societal impacts?

As a PhD student at Wageningen University you will apply a large scale hydrology-crop model in river basins that are originating from snow and ice covered mountains.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Analyse how missing complex mountain processes in global precipitation products and hydrological models affect water availability estimates.
• Quantify the importance of mountainwater for agriculture and ecosystems globally, by analyzing how meltwater flows interact with crop growing seasons and environmental flow requirements in basins with large irrigation demand and high meltwater flows.
• Run the hydrology-crop model in combination with mountain streamflow (from high resolution mountain hydrology models) for selected basins to analyse mountain water contributions to downstream river flow, agricultural water use, and sustaining ecosystems for hotspot areas.
• Using a global mountain reanalysis dataset to evaluate for all mountain areas globally their contribution to downstream river flows, agriculture and ecosystems.

You will publish your research findings in high ranking scientific journals and present it at conferences.

You will also be asked to contribute occasionally to education, by helping in the supervision of MSc students that work on their thesis projects, and supporting in courses.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the chair Water Systems and Global Change. You will be supervised by Prof. Dr. Hester Biemans, Dr. Manoj Khaniya and a third supervisor tbd.

Finance Administration Officer

Are you the Financial Administrator with experience in a wide range of administrative processes? Do you enjoy tackling more complex challenges? Are you someone who ensures that processes run smoothly and proactively comes up with suggestions for improvement? In addition to your financial knowledge, are you enthusiastic about supporting WUR as part of a team? Do you enjoy solving problems and ensuring customer satisfaction?

We would love to hear from you!

Your role
As a Financial Administration Officer, you will join the P2P (Purchase to Pay) team. Together with the other senior team members, you will be responsible for supporting the P2P employees in a senior capacity.

Under the direct supervision of the P2P Team Leader, you will ensure that data is accurately recorded in the general ledger and that balance sheet positions are properly managed. You will play an important role in ensuring that all accounts payable transactions are recorded and paid on time, accurately and completely.

You will also become the first point of contact for the expense reimbursement system developed in-house at WUR for external claimants. In addition, you will support purchasers in carrying out their work as efficiently as possible within the relevant processes.

You have strong digital skills and enjoy using IT tools such as Excel and Power BI to contribute to innovation and improve and standardise working methods. You also have experience working at a service desk, where you have assisted both internal and external customers.

Location
Your primary place of work will be Wageningen, and you are willing to work at our Lelystad location from time to time.

Building and maintaining good relationships with other finance colleagues is essential to ensure effective collaboration and communication.

We offer hybrid working, with an equal division of working hours: 50% on-site and 50% from home. This balance gives you the flexibility to work both in a dynamic office environment and in the peace and quiet of your own home.

Bringing WUR's financial administration together at the Shared Service Centre Finance

The Shared Service Centre Finance (SSC-F) is a new department within WUR. Since 2025, all decentralised financial administration teams have been working together as one Shared Service Centre Finance for WUR.

The Shared Service Centre Finance consists of three teams:

• Purchase to Pay (accounts payable)
• Invoice to Cash (accounts receivable)
• Accounting (general ledger)

The SSC-F operates from two locations: Wageningen and Lelystad. Representatives of all three teams are based at both locations.