All Things Urban

Wageningen University & Research provides education and generates knowledge in the domain of healthy food and living environment.

‘To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life’. That is the mission of Wageningen University & Research (WUR). A staff of 6,500 and 10,000 students from over 100 countries work everywhere around the world in the domain of healthy food and living environment for governments and the business community-at-large.

The strength of WUR lies in its ability to join the forces of specialised research institutes and the University. It also lies in the combined efforts of the various fields of natural and social sciences. This union of expertise leads to scientific breakthroughs that can quickly be put into practice and be incorporated into education. This is the Wageningen Approach.

Are you willing to explore fundamental issues of a strategic-integrated approach of managing public space? We seek a PhD candidate on the topic “Managing Public Space”.

While an extensive academic debate about planning and designing public space takes place in spatial planning and urban design, the management of public space is a hitherto widely neglected topic in the academic debate. At the same time, management of public space can play a key role in the complex challenges and transitions in cities and regions. There is a need in society for an effective management of public space.

Urban and rural areas face major transitions such as circularity, energy transition, climate adaptation or digitalization. At the same time, many public assets are about to be modernized and refurbished or changed due to their lifecycles. This offers windows of opportunity to deal with the transitions. Therefore, approaches that go beyond the existing pragmatic and operational approaches are necessary for managing public space.

Can a strategic-integrated approach to the management of public space offer new perspectives? In other words, the academic community need to turn proactively towards managing public space and embrace it as an academic and societal challenge of future public space in cities, villages and rural areas.

This PhD project will address this need by exploring fundamental issues of a strategic-integrated approach of managing public space, such as spatial scales and time horizons of an integral-strategic management of public space, modes of governance for such a management, context-dependency of managing public space or societal effects of public space. This covers a wide range of aspects crossing many disciplines.

This position is allocated at the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning (LSP) group. Do you want to know more about our work at the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning? Check out our page with news, recent publications and projects.

To strengthen our team you should:

• have a master’s degree in urban and environmental management, spatial planning, urbanism, landscape architecture, civil engineering, or other relevant discipline and have demonstrated skill to conduct research;
• be curious, creative, independent and have innovative ideas;
• have excellent organizational (time management), connecting and communication skills (networking with academic scientists of various disciplines as well as with representatives of stakeholders);
• have interest in both fundamental and applied aspects of the project;
• be able to conduct interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research;
• be able to conduct empirical fieldwork in the Netherlands (fluent Dutch is required), proficient in the English language, oral and written;
• experiences with Living Labs or other co-creative processes are an advantage;
• collaborate and actively contribute to the association Managing Public Space (www.managing publicspace.com) to support the development of an academic research and teaching programme.

In addition you should meet all the entry requirements of the WUR PhD programme.

You will receive a fully funded PhD position and you will be offered a course program tailored to your needs and the research team.

The gross salary for the first year is € 2.395,- per month rising to € 3.061,- in the fourth year in according to the Collective Labour Agreement (scale P). This is based on a full working week of 38 hours. We offer a temporary contract for 18 months which will be extended for the duration of the project (4 years total) if you perform well.

In addition, we offer:

• 8% holiday allowance;
• a structural year-end bonus of 8.3%;
• excellent training opportunities and secondary employment conditions;
• flexible working hours and holidays can possibly be determined in consultation so that an optimal balance between work and private life is possible;
• excellent pension plan through ABP;
• 232 vacation hours, the option to purchase extra and good supplementary leave schemes;
• a flexible working time: the possibility to work a maximum of 2 hours per week extra and thereby to build up extra leave;
• a choice model to put together part of your employment conditions yourself, such as a bicycle plan;
• a lively workplace where you can easily make contacts and where many activities take place on the Wageningen Campus. A place where education, research and business are represented;
• use the sports facilities on campus.

Wageningen University & Research stimulates internal career opportunities and mobility with our internal recruitment policy. There are ample opportunities for personal initiative in a learning environment. With us you get a versatile job in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere, with students and staff from over 100 countries around the world.

You are going to work at the greenest and most innovative campus in Holland, and at a university that has been chosen as the “Best University” in the Netherlands for the 15th consecutive time.

We’re not fully sure whether this role is open to international candidates. If you would need visa sponsorship or work authorisation, we recommend checking directly with the employer before applying.