7 PhD positions on food environments and promoting healthy and sustainable diets

The consumption and healthy lifestyles group is a young and ambitious chair group keen to unravel the origins of healthy and sustainable consumption and lifestyle practices. These behavioural insights are used to design, evaluate and implement strategies to enable healthy and sustainable consumption. These strategies include upstream environmental and downstream behavioural interventions acknowledging that individual behaviour is socially embedded and arises in specific times and places. The work of the group is characterized by an inter- and transdisciplinary approach where different academic disciplines (e.g., sociology, psychology, public health, epidemiology and geography) and professional fields (policy, practice) collaborate.

As a result of three major grants, we can appoint 7 PhD candidates with an interest in food environments and shifting diets in healthy and sustainable directions:

1. Within the NWO funded project "Tipping the balance towards dietary change" 3 PhD candidates will be appointed that focus on design research for creating healthy and sustainable food environments (PhD1), behavioral aftereffects of environmental changes at individual level (PhD2) and emotional backlash towards and societal acceptance of plant based diets and healthy food environments (PhD3).
2. Within the Regiodeal Foodvalley, 3 PhD candidates will be appointed that are interested in generating practice-based evidence for creating healthy and sustainable food environments in neighbourhoods (PhD4), workplaces (PhD5) and in health care institutions (PhD6).
3. From the WUR Protein Transition program, PhD7 will supplement these projects by generating basic insights using data science and experimental studies exploring the gap between individual behavioral intentions and consumption patterns at an aggregated level.

You can find detailed information about the grants and the 7 PhD positions we have available via the following link: https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Chair-groups/Social-Sciences/Consumption-and-Healthy-Lifestyles-1/7-PhD-positions-on-food-environments-promoting-healthy-and-sustainable-diets.htm.

The positions will be placed in the chair group Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles. More information about the group can be found here.

For all PhD positions, we expect the candidate to:

• have completed a master's degree (specified by all 7 positions);
• be willing to learn and think across disciplines and professions;
• be able to communicate with fellow researchers, other stakeholders, and societal partners;
• be collaborative and a real team player;
• have excellent Dutch as well as English academic writing and presentation skills (Knowledge of the Dutch language is obligatory for projects 1 to 6);
• meet all the entry requirements of the WUR PhD programme.

In addition you have to meet the requirements specified by the specific PhD position(s).

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 € 2.325,- per month rising to € 2.972,- 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 if you perform well.
In addition, we offer:

• 8% holiday allowance;
• a structural end-of year bonus of 8.3%;
• excellent training opportunities and secondary employment conditions;
• flexible working hours that we determine together in good consultation;
• excellent pension plan through ABP;
• 232 vacation hours, the option to purchase extra and good supplementary leave schemes, e.g. the possibility to work a maximum of 2 hours per week extra for extra leave;
• a flexible model to put together part of your employment conditions yourself, such as a bicycle plan;
• a lively workplace on the Wageningen Campus;
• make use of the sports facilities on campus for a small fee.

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 a university that has been chosen as the "Best University" in the Netherlands for the 15th consecutive time.

The mission of our University is to explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life. Within Wageningen University & Research, nine specialised research institutes from the Wageningen Research Foundation and Wageningen University have joined forces to help answer the most important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment.

With approximately 30 locations, 6.500 employees, and 12.000 students, it is one of the leading organisations in its domain worldwide. An integrated approach to problems and the cooperation between various disciplines are at the heart of the unique approach of Wageningen. We have been named Best Employer in Education category 2019-2020.

Click here for more information about working at Wageningen University & Research. More information about Wageningen Campus you can find here.

We do the recruiting for this vacancy ourselves. Please do not contact us for sales purposes.

For more general information about these projects, please contact the principal investigator on the projects: Prof. dr. Emely de Vet (emely.devet@wur.nl). For specifics on individual PhD positions, please consult the reference person mentioned with the position.

For more information about the procedure, please contact our recruitment department of the Social Science Group via e-mail: recruitment.ssg@wur.nl.

Do you want to apply?
This can be done directly via the application button at the vacancy on our website so that we can process your personal data with your permission. Only applications received via our website are taken into consideration.

This vacancy is open up to and including the 18th of June, 2020. We want to plan the first online job interviews on the 26th and 30th of June, 2020. A possible second job interview will take place on the 10th or 15th of July, 2020.

In order to apply, please upload:

• a motivation letter;
• your cv, with names of 2 references;
• in addition, you are asked to submit a short plan of 250 words (which we call an abstract) of a study you would like to conduct in the study which could include research question or hypotheses and research methods (participants, design, measures, analyses).

Please apply for the specific project(s) of your preferences. You are allowed to apply for more than 1 project. If you wish to do so, please submit separate motivation letters and separate abstracts for the projects you want to apply for.

Please submit your application according to the following format:
Curriculum vitae/ resume, file name: PhD CV
Covering letter with your motivation: PhD letter

Equal opportunities employer
We are an employer that offers equal opportunities. We are happy to receive applications from all suitably qualified people regardless of race, gender, functional impairment, religion / belief, sexual orientation or age.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive working environment makes us a more relevant, competitive and resilient organization. Click here for more information about working at WUR with a functional impairment.