PhD: Co-created long term visions for prosperous rural-urban interactions

Are you keen to contribute to prosperous rural-urban interactions in Dutch regions that deal with future challenges? Would you like to develop inspirational, integrated long term designs that are thoroughly tested and are co-created with societal partners? Then you could be the ideal PhD candidate to join our team!

We are hiring a PhD candidate for a 4-year PhD trajectory that aims to develop long term regional landscape designs and accompanying spatial strategies for land use change for two Dutch rural-urban regions, using a Research Through Design methodology. This PhD position is part of the ‘Fertile Soils’ project that explores the potential to address multiple spatial challenges in rural and urban areas simultaneously through exchange of ‘landscape services’. To fulfil this potential, a multifunctional spatial organization of the landscape is needed that minimizes trade-offs and maximizes synergies between landscape services. Moreover, spatial planning and design has to take a long-term perspective in exploring fundamentally new, prosperous interactions between urban and rural areas.

In this PhD project you will design inspiring, transformative long-term designs (time horizon: approximately year 2100) for the two rural-urban regions Zwolle and Breda-Tilburg. You will develop and apply a Research Through Design (RTD) methodology to further specify the pathways towards these visions with spatial strategies on the middle-long-term (year 2035-2055). This RTD approach should fit the transdisciplinary, regional design context and allow for the testing of the designs with various experts and stakeholders on potential landscape services exchange. This participatory approach ensures the designs are anchored in historically developed rural-urban relationships, and affiliated biophysical, cultural and socio-economic characteristics of the region. You use the RTD processes and (stakeholder) reflections on the design processes in the two regions to explore the required preconditions for creating synergies between landscape services. You will work in the Fertile Soils project with 9 other PhDs and collaborate with stakeholders in the region as well as designers and experts from practice to ensure that the research is not only theoretically sound, but also relevant and applicable.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Develop a research through design approach that effectively addresses societal problems and potentials in the context of rural-urban regions, with special focus on participatory methods;
• Using this research through design approach, generate a long term vision and accompanying middle-long term spatial strategies for two rural-urban region in the Netherlands;
• Create design principles that support spatial planning and design aimed at initiating transformative change in the exchange of landscape services;
• Setting up and carrying out the above-mentioned research, resulting in, among other things, a PhD dissertation containing at least three international scientific publications;
• Presenting the research and intermediate research results in the Netherlands and at international scientific conferences;
• Actively participating and contributing to the PhD community of Fertile Soils and the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning cluster.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the Landscape Architecture Chair Group, part of the cluster Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning. You will be supervised by dr. ir. Dirk Oudes, dr. ir. Ilse Voskamp and prof. dr. Sanda Lenzholzer. Depending on the phase of the project you will also be working in the regions and at the office of project partner Arcadis, Amersfoort.

Program Developer Climate Resilient Cities

As Program Developer Climate Resilient Cities (CRC) you will jointly shape and implement the strategic research and innovation programme on urban climate adaptation at AMS Institute. Together with fellow Program Developers, Project Managers, Research Fellows and Principal Investigators, you work on the development and execution of the CRC programme and contribute to the broader Research & Innovation portfolio of AMS Institute.

The Climate Resilient Cities programme focuses on strengthening the adaptive capacity and resilience of Amsterdam’s urban system in the face of climate change. We work on improving the understanding of urban weather and climate, on greening strategies that contribute both to climate adaptation and urban biodiversity, and on the role of water and the subsurface in the city. Our work results in concrete solutions that directly contribute to a future-proof, inclusive and liveable city. We collaborate closely with asset managers and other stakeholders across different city districts.

In practice, we observe that the main bottleneck for accelerating climate adaptation is not a lack of technical or nature-based solutions, but rather a need for innovation in governance and financial-economic arrangements. A key question in the programme therefore is: how do we turn climate-adaptive solutions into the new normal for cities?

Together with your fellow Program Developers, you are responsible for the vision and strategic direction of the programme. You develop and coordinate a broad portfolio of research and innovation projects and connect the CRC programme with the other AMS Institute programmes.

Your duties and responsibilities include
As Program Developer Climate Resilient Cities, you will:

• Co-create the strategic research and innovation agenda on urban climate adaptation together with public, private and academic stakeholders;
• Maintain and further expand the partner network and ecosystem active in climate adaptation;
• Develop and coordinate a diverse portfolio of research and innovation projects, safeguarding synergy and coherence within the programme;
• Acquire and manage funding for projects, for example through companies, public authorities and research and innovation funding schemes such as NWO, RVO and Horizon Europe;
• Translate and valorise project results into usable product or process innovations that can be applied or commercialised by public or private parties;
• Actively contribute to the further development and international positioning of AMS Institute as a leading institute in urban innovation.

Your team
You will be part of the Research & Innovation team at AMS Institute and work closely with Programme Developers, Project Managers, researchers and municipal colleagues. To bridge scientific research and urban practice, you will maintain intensive contact within a broad triple-helix network of municipalities, partner universities (Wageningen University & Research and TU Delft), other knowledge institutions and innovative companies.

You will also collaborate closely with students from the MSc programme Metropolitan Analysis, Design and Engineering (MADE) at AMS Institute.

Connection with Wageningen University & Research
While being seconded to AMS Institute, you remain firmly connected to Wageningen University & Research. This combination offers the best of both worlds: close engagement with urban practice in Amsterdam, and a strong home in applied scientific research.

Postdoc: Micro–Macro Modelling of Circular Society Transitions

Help to accelerate the transition to a circular Netherlands by developing micro-macro models at the metropolitan scale.

The world is facing many ecological and political challenges, many of them rooted in the linear, extractive systems of resource use in present-day society. As a result, these challenges throw up many questions about the future of society and cities. One widely agreed-upon necessity is the transition to a circular society, a society that is not extractive but that systematically reuses its resources. In this Postdoc, you will contribute to visions of a circular future, particularly in an urban context.

Our multi-disciplinary NWA project ‘Accelerating the Circular Transition’ (ACT!) develops a systemic approach to accelerate the fair transition to a circular society in The Netherlands (and beyond). It will co-create an integrated approach to manage this complex transition, building a toolbox of shared visions of and for a circular society with societal well-being at its centre. For this, the consortium consists of a large variety of scientific researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as stakeholders from all parts of Dutch society, including (national, regional and local) government, industry, and local NGO’s. Transitioning to a circular society poses trade-offs: creating new jobs while potentially eliminating others, enhancing wellbeing but reducing demand. Products as a service (PaaS) may boost resource efficiency but concentrate value in platforms. This demands comprehensive modelling. Global CGE models based on an IO core with environmental and social extensions.

Your main contribution will be in the co-developing of a toolset (aim of WP2 of the project) to simulate a circular society and the transition to it, in particular focusing on the spatial distributions of the impact of the transition. These tools will be used to evaluate pathways (as developed in WP3 and WP4 of the project) and monitor the transition and its impacts on key wellbeing and environmental impact indicators in the Netherlands in general and the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region more specifically.

Together with researchers from Wageningen University, Leiden University and Tilburg University, you will work on integrating their findings from the (static) circular LCAs, stock-flow MFA information and the environmental-economic metabolism in specific geographical areas such as Amsterdam with information on shifts in value-capturing potential when shifting to circular systems. This will provide novel insights into feedbacks, demand and supply balances and incentives for consumers and firms.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• develop novel simulation model (extensions) for circularity transitions;
• investigate the systemic effects (across space) of different demand and supply decisions in the context of circular economy/society;
• collaborate in an interdisciplinary team and explore different methodological approaches;
• publish in peer-reviewed journals and present findings at international conferences;
• interact with micro-modelers in collecting primary and secondary data to connect their Agent-based model to the macro models.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the chair Urban Economics, which is led by Prof. Eveline van Leeuwen. You will be co-supervised by Francesca Rubiconto (UEC). Furthermore, you will be connected to the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), which is an important entry point for data and models in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam.

Postdoc: The renewable energy transition on farms

In the context of renewable energy production at the farm level, new innovations such as the production of electricity via agrivoltaics or through bio-methanation are practices with realistic and practical potential.

In the agricultural sector, the transition to more sustainable systems requires innovations and practices that enhance environmental conditions whilst improving the economic revenue of the farm. In the EU H2020 Value4Farm project (value4farm – Sustainable renewable energy value chains for answering farmers’ needs), an Audit tool will be developed for supporting and assisting farmers to select and take the best decisions about establishing and upscaling renewable energy production on their farms.

Building on the 3 pillars of sustainability, this Audit tool will help a farmer to evaluate the actual farm potential for renewable energy and provide insights into the key considerations requiring consideration for on-farm renewable energy production.

The audit tool will help a farmer to explore the possibility of producing electricity by implementing agrivoltaics, or via the production of biogas. This solution-oriented tool will have both qualitative and quantitative components, requiring the user to reflect on their own farm situation to provide an assessment for the production of renewable energy.

The Postdoc will help in the development and testing of the audit tool, working closely with an international team from the VALUE4FARM project.

The Postdoc will combine theoretical knowledge with qualitative and quantitative analysis, supported by wider team members. Alongside scientific social research, and multicriteria analysis, the postdoc will collaborate with partners to identify operational needs and elaborate the prototype of the audit tool.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• The co-development and testing of the audit tool
• Social and economic analysis of the implementation of the Audit tool

Your team
You will work with an international team from the VALUE4FARM project. Weekly meetings will take place with local partners of the project, and monthly meetings (mainly online) will be performed with partners abroad.

Postdoc Microbiological and chemical arsenic recovery from drinking water sludge

This postdoc position is part of the European research project “From Contaminant to Commodity (C2C): Toward a Circular Economy for Arsenic in Groundwater” involving partners in Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden. The overarching project goal is contribute to an improved management of arsenic-rich residues from the arsenic removal from drinking water and to establish procedures for the effective recovery and valorization of arsenic as critical raw material. In collaboration with project partners, the postdoctoral researcher will

• develop chemical and biological methods for arsenic extraction from arsenic-loaded sludge,
• identify suitable arsenic extraction or separation steps based on arsenic-loaded sludge structural properties and
• have the leading role in the exploitation and dissemination strategy for the project.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Performing chemical and microbiological experiments in the laboratory using batch bottles and reactors
• Supervision of MSc students
• Leading the exploitation and dissemination of the project
• (optional) teach in BSc and/or MSc courses

Your team
At location, you will work within the Resource recovery sub-group of Environmental Technology. In the project, your main collaborators will be the other postdocs and PIs in the consortium.

You will work here
The department of Environmental Technology is a large and vibrant research group of about 30 scientific staff-members, 10 laboratory and technical support staff, 80 PhD candidates and 6 postdocs. The group has close collaborations with scientific institutes, industrial stakeholders and water organizations within the Netherlands and beyond.