All Things Urban

NEWAVE Next Water Governance is an Innovative Training Network (ITN) supported and co-funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action programme, providing 15 positions for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs). The NEWAVE project departs from the notion that the global debate about water governance needs a reset, and aims to point the way forward. It does so by developing research and training for a new generation of future water governance leaders, and by equipping them with the transdisciplinary skills to better tackle water challenges.

**Topic** Safe, sustainable water provision are out of reach for many of the world’s poorest residents. Problems are acute in cities, where fast-growing populations place stress on inadequate water infrastructures. Improvements in access tend to focus on increasing connections to the water network. Yet, networked service comes with its own set of problems: scarce supply, poor service delivery, high costs, high maintenance demands, and/or an inability to extend the network due to illegal land tenure status. Whether out of need or by choice, large numbers of urban dwellers in Indonesia, and the global South more broadly, rely on a complex and dynamic mix of grid-based and off-grid sources. Infrastructural solutions are therefore best understood as hybrid, differing from uniform grid-based provision in cities of the global North. These systems reflect a state of infrastructural coexistence: a mode of urban development that emerges in parallel and in conjunction with formal networked infrastructure. Infrastructural coexistence is the norm in developing contexts, not the exception. Practitioners need to better understand the drivers that lead urban dwellers to pursue off-grid solutions, the outcomes and trade-offs of infrastructural coexistence, and the governance arrangements that support these models as a solution for urban residents. Under what conditions could infrastructural coexistence promote secure, sustainable, and equity-driven water and sanitation security? **This PhD position will:** The aim of this research project is to generate empirically grounded analysis of how networked (‘on-grid’) and independent (‘off-grid’) water infrastructure can co-exist in ways that promote secure, sustainable, and equity-driven solutions for residents of Indonesian cities. The researcher will focus on the city of Semarang, in Central Java, Indonesia. The PhD research will be designed to achieve the following objectives: - Identify and characterize the diverse water infrastructural configurations and their functioning - Evaluate the impacts (distributional, cultural, environmental) of coexistent development and understand how heterogeneous outcomes are locally produced and contested - Develop decision-support tools for policy that promote more just and sustainable outcomes for particular forms of infrastructural coexistence. **Expected results:** - A systematic and comprehensive empirical understanding of infrastructural coexistence in water in the city of Semarang, Indonesia - Contribution to development of policy models enabling sustainable and equitable solutions in Indonesian cities. - Knowledge generated on the conditions under which infrastructural co-existence develops, and the institutional and governance arrangements that make these configurations work as solutions - Documentation of new knowledge in a diversity of formats and media for use by practitioners, governments, civil society, and researchers. **We seek** - Above-average MSc and/or Research MSc (preferred) in Human Geography, Urban Planning, Development Studies, or related fields - Familiarity and willingness to aquire Indonesian language skills - A commitment to academic excellence with a track record of high impact research - Proven skills in executing empirical research in challenging contexts - Capacity to work independently and as part of a team - Examples of high-quality written work, such as a journal paper or equivalent - Outstanding interpersonal skills to work with multiple stakeholders **Eligibility criteria** - You must – at the date of recruitment – have obtained the MSc degree entitling you to embark on a doctorate - You must – at the date of recruitment – be within the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of your research career and not have a doctoral degree - Mobility rule: you must not have resided or carried out your main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of the host organisation you are applying for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the recruitment date. Compulsory national service and/or short stays such as holidays are not taken into account. *Please make sure you comply with the eligibility criteria before applying. You need to be able to provide documentation proving your eligibility for recruitment. You can read the full description of eligibility criteria in the Information Note for ITN Fellows. **Supervisors** - Prof. Margreet Zwarteveen, Professor of Water Governance at IHE-Delft and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Prof. Dustin Garrick, Associate professor of environmental management, University of Oxford, United Kingdom - Ms Nila Ardhianie, Director or research, AMRTA Institute for Water Literacy, Indonesia

This job is available for international candidates.