One of many complex sustainability challenges we are currently facing is global climate change. There is ample evidence showing that the human population is on an unsustainable trajectory, with increasing CO2 emissions and declining biodiversity. While knowledge on the climate system is growing, our ways to teach students and engage with the public regarding this information is keeping up with this pace. In this position, you will combine teaching and research on the interface between the sciences and the arts.
Your job Moving towards a sustainability transformation requires our students to adapt to change and to develop their capacity to shape and create change. For this, it is important to connect the cognitive learning objectives (head) with practical skill development (hand) and affective learning objectives (heart). In this PhD project, the aim is to implement the head-hand-heart approach in our climate change research and education. You will therefore be working on the interface between the sciences and the arts. On the one hand, you will work on environmental topics, including data gathering in the field or living labs, and data harvesting from large data repositories, data analysis and modelling. On the other hand, you will work together with the University of the Arts Utrecht (HKU), working, for instance, on gamification and sonification of climate science.
To explore and study the interface between the climate sciences and the arts, the
Copernicus Institute of sustainable development is looking for a combined teacher-PhD candidate with an interest in education and sustainability & climate science. In this position, you will combine research on environmental sciences and sustainability education with teaching in our bachelor and master programmes. As a combined teacher-PhD candidate, you have a six-year contract to complete your PhD research and obtain a
University Teaching Qualification (UTQ/BKO) in combination with teaching and education development.
Teaching is primarily based at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, in the Bachelor
Global Sustainability Science and the Master
Sustainable Development. Your time between research and teaching is divided 60-40. In addition, approximately 10% of your time is allocated for professional and academic development, for instance for obtaining a University Teaching Qualification (UTQ/BKO) and following PhD courses. You will also join the
Geosciences Graduate School for PhDs.