PhD position in the field of climate dynamics

Global warming may drive a collapse or massive weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC, loosely the Gulfstream system). This would lead to significant climate change, most notably cooling over northwestern Europe. It is feared that AMOC collapse would affect regional agriculture and transport and possibly global food security. Recently, researchers from IMAU have for the first time modelled a full AMOC collapse in a full-fledged climate model, the Community Earth System Model (CESM).

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is a controversial, hitherto hypothetical method to cool the earth by injecting a thin reflective cloud layer into the higher atmosphere. Modelling evidence so far suggests that SAI may avert AMOC weakening if properly implemented, but if applied too late, cooling impacts from AMOC collapse or temporary weakening and from SAI coincide, potentially exacerbating the situation. However, SAI’s ability to prevent full AMOC collapse has not yet been studied in models.

In this interdisciplinary PhD project, you will address the following research questions:

• Can timely SAI prevent AMOC collapse, and is there a deadline after which it is too late to save AMOC?
• How does AMOC collapse, as well as successful or unsuccessful attempts to prevent it using SAI, affect food production?
• How would AMOC collapse impact food trade and food security?
• How can the global food system be made more resilient to AMOC collapse?

To do so, you will work with researchers from climate physics, hydrology, sustainability science and complex systems dynamics and apply a range of different models.

Starting from the recent AMOC tipping simulations performed at IMAU, we will first investigate the ability of SAI to prevent AMOC tipping if used well in advance, and to revert (or worsen) ongoing tipping. Next, we study the impact of AMOC collapse without SAI, as well as successful and unsuccessful SAI deployment, on food production. To this end, we use CESM output to force the hydrological/crop model PCR-GLOBWB and simulate the impact on food production. Finally, a global food trade model is used to study the impacts of AMOC collapse on global food security.

PhD: A deep dive into youth cyberhate

Cyberhate is a significant global concern. In a recent pilot study with Dutch youth, we found that 8% of youth reported to have friends who sent hateful or threatening messages to politicians online, while approximately 4% admitted doing so themselves. Even more youth are exposed to cyberhate (31-57%) or become a victim (4-16%). Consequences for personal wellbeing can be significant, and there are also concerns for how cyberhate might affect societal cohesion and increase the risk for offline violence. Research is lagging behind on this contemporary challenge, with schools and governments playing catch up on how to appropriately respond.

The PhD project will take a unique, multi-method, and longitudinal approach. The basis for the PhD project will be a longitudinal cohort-study, where three groups of youth (starting ages 10, 13, and 16) will be followed for three consecutive years, with their parents surveyed in the first year as well. Moreover, there will be opportunity to collect and computationally analyse social media data (e.g., Instagram and TikTok activity) from youth, to be able to gain unique insight into what they post and consume online.

This proposed PhD project will form an integral part of a larger longitudinal project on violent youth radicalization and conspiracy belief, conducted by an interdisciplinary team spanning forensic youth care sciences, developmental psychology, sociology, and criminology. An important aspect of this PhD project is the data-collection, which will start in the summer of 2026. You, together with research assistants, will have an important role in ensuring data are collected from youth in schools, including social media data donation. As a PhD candidate, your tasks will include:

• instrument selection;
• setting up the social media data donation in collaboration with experts at Utrecht University;
• examining literature on the topic, reporting results in scientific articles for international journals (which will be compiled into an academic dissertation);
• presenting at (inter)national conferences;
• collaborating with stakeholders;
• attending relevant courses;
• teaching responsibility (+/- 10%), and achieving societal impact of the findings, together with the rest of the team.

PhD: Recognizing Multicultural Strengths of Youth via Social Networks at Work

In the Netherlands, adolescents with a migration background are less likely to find (adequate) internships and first-time jobs compared to their peers without a migration background. To date, research primarily tends to focus on how a multicultural background can lead to difficulties when entering the labor market, including more discrimination, less social support, and fewer relevant working experiences compared to monocultural peers. In the current project, we take a novel approach by examining the recognition of beneficial strengths that adolescents with a migration background may bring to the labor market.

People growing up in difficult conditions develop enhanced abilities, not despite, but precisely because of their challenging experiences. Research suggests that by navigating and negotiating diverse cultural contexts, multicultural individuals can gain rich knowledge and valuable skills (e.g., perspective taking, flexibility, creativity) that can benefit youth in their internships and jobs. Yet, how does the recognition of multicultural strengths emerge among migrant youth? Do employers also recognize and value such multicultural strength among migrant youth? And can the recognition of multicultural strengths be leveraged by both youth and employers to increase chances on the labor market?

This PhD project consists of two research objectives.

Objective 1: examining how social networks contribute to the recognition of multicultural strengths in multicultural youth and potential employers. Social networks refer to the web of social relationships individuals are embedded in, such as connections with friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances. These networks are not merely sources of emotional support but play a central role in influencing attitudes and perceptions, as well as migrants’ chances on the labor market. You will collect ego-centric network data using a novel visualized network-data collection tool specifically designed to survey complex personal networks.

Objective 2: examining the effect of recognizing multicultural strengths among multicultural youth and potential employers on the labor market integration of multicultural youth. You will design experiments to test the direct influence of a) adolescents’ recognition of their multicultural strengths on job-related emotion, motivation and behavior and b) employers’ recognition of multicultural strengths on job applications from multicultural youth.

Supervision Team
The project will be supervised by Verena Seibel (Interdisciplinary Social Science), Sheida Novin (Development Psychology), and Tobias Stark (Interdisciplinary Social Science). We are an interdisciplinary team, combining insights from sociology, developmental psychology, and social psychology.

Your tasks

• Together with your supervisory team, you will design and conduct novel empirical studies;
• You will integrate new insights across disciplines, including sociology, developmental psychology, and social psychology;
• With our support, you will be in charge of all aspects of data collection (from recruiting participants, to conducting ego-centric network studies and experiments at Dutch schools and Dutch companies);
• You will use advanced statistical methods to process and analyze data (e.g., social network analysis);
• You will write international peer-reviewed scientific papers;
• You will work in a collaborative environment that seeks to improve one another’s research;
• You will present your work at international conferences for academics, policy makers, and educators.

PhD: Visievorming en politiek in de warmtetransitie

Dit promotieonderzoek onderzoekt hoe het vormen en delen van toekomstbeelden de benodigde en gewenste veranderingen mogelijk kan maken.

Tijdens dit promotieonderzoek werk je regelmatig samen met collega-onderzoekers en diverse stakeholders, als onderdeel van het EmPowerED-project, gefinancierd door de NWO

Wat ga je doen?

Samen met ervaren begeleiders, wordt van je verwacht dat je:

• het promotieonderzoek relatief zelfstandig uitvoert;
• een theoretisch kader ontwikkelt;
• data verzamelt en analyseert;
• in samenspraak met stakeholders één of meerdere interventies ontwikkelt;
• peer-reviewed artikelen schrijft;
• spreekt op wetenschappelijke conferenties en bij consortiumbijeenkomsten en andere evenementen.

Het brede EmPowerED-project onderzoekt samen met stakeholders concrete oplossingsrichtingen voor het realiseren van ‘Positive Energy Districts’, wijken met een netto positieve energiebalans. In dit promotieonderzoek treedt Dr. Jesse Hoffman op als eerste begeleider, dr. Sanne Akerboom als tweede begeleider, en faculteitshoogleraar Maarten Hajer als promotor.

In het onderzoek bouw je voort op de rijke ervaring binnen het begeleidingsteam op het gebied van de ‘dramaturgie’ van politieke besluitvorming, de politiek van toekomstverbeelding en het recht. Je bestudeert diverse casussen. Omdat we een maatschappelijke en politieke impact willen maken, vindt het onderzoek in principe plaats in Nederland.

Op basis van je onderzoeksbevindingen ontwikkel je samen met het begeleidingsteam een interventie. Als PhD-kandidaat volg je diverse trainingen en workshops bij de Graduate School of Geosciences, gerelateerd aan het uitvoeren van onderzoek en het schrijven van wetenschappelijke teksten.

PhD: Coupling the biological pump to past changes in the AMOC

The AMOC transports warm saline waters from the tropics to the high northern latitudes of the North Atlantic where they cool and sink. This part of the density-driven global “conveyor belt” may be losing its strength due to ongoing global warming, with potential large-scale climate repercussions. Even more so since the AMOC brings CO2 from the surface to the deep ocean during deepwater formation (physical pump), and variations in the AMOC strength will change the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2. The magnitude of this impact and the processes involved remain however difficult to predict. Also in the past, the strength of the AMOC varied and abrupt shifts between cold and warm periods have been recorded in marine sediments on geological timescales. The North Atlantic Ocean is also a key region for carbon sequestration by the biological carbon pump. Hence, the transfer of both organic carbon and inorganic carbon from the surface to the deep ocean is locally promoted. The aim of the project is to investigate interaction between changes in the AMOC and the physical and biological pumps during rapid climate transitions (e.g., the last glacial period and Holocene) using sediment records. Our data will be used in marine carbon cycle models to predict (future) carbon sequestration upon changes in the AMOC strength.

During this four-year PhD project, you will apply a multiproxy (biogeochemical and micropaleontological/palynological) approach to sediment records from selected locations in the North Atlantic collected along a present-day temperature and salinity latitudinal transect. You will reconstruct surface and deep-water temperatures and salinity, and the (efficiency) of the organic and inorganic biological carbon pump via proxies indicative of primary productivity, CO2/pH in a surface deep-water gradient at times of known major past climate shifts and AMOC changes at decadal to millennial timescales. This project may include participation in seagoing expeditions.

This project is part of the 10-year EMBRACER research programme funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). At EMBRACER, we work at the very frontiers of knowledge on climate change, earth’s climate system and climate feedbacks. The programme brings together a wide range of world-leading climate experts with the aim to address existing uncertainties about climate feedbacks at the boundaries between oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. Our interdisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art infrastructure will bring us forward in our understanding of the impact of climate feedbacks emerging over the next decades to centuries.

A personalised training programme will be set up, reflecting your training needs and career objectives. About 20% of your time will be dedicated to this training component, which includes following courses/workshops as well as training on the job in assisting in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes of the department at Utrecht University.

The project leader and daily supervisor will be Dr Francesca Sangiorgi and close collaboration in the project will be with Prof. Gert-Jan Reichart Dr Martin Ziegler, and Dr Lennart de Nooijer. Multiple others will be involved for specific aspects of the project. Foreseeable international collaborators include Profs. Stijn de Schepper and Ulysses Ninnemann (University of Bergen, Norway).