Do you have a passion for studying personal development and sustainability? Are you excited about transdisciplinary collaboration in living lab settings? Then we invite you to join the Education and Learning Sciences group.

The consortium project “Toekomstbestendige Leefomgeving”, funded by the Nationaal Groeifonds, brings together a variety of stakeholders (including architects and engineers, public administrators, researchers, and civil society) related to the construction sector with the aim to design healthy and sustainable urban living environments.

These stakeholders come together in transdisciplinary living labs that are dedicated to specific construction-related problems and collaborate to finding applicable solutions to these problems. An essential task for such kind of living labs lies in making sure that the involved stakeholders can draw upon their various capacities to actively contribute to the process. Furthermore, it is important to equally include different perspectives and knowledges to guarantee a co-creative collaboration.

The research team at WUR is looking for a postdoctoral researcher (fulltime, 2 years) working on these tasks. The successful candidate will conduct (qualitative) research in the aforementioned living labs. You will contribute to understanding how such transdisciplinary collaboration processes can be designed and facilitated in such a way that they allow participants to actively draw upon their various capacities to contribute to these collaboration processes.

In particular, you inquire into the subjectively experienced challenges of the participants, as well as the intrapersonal resources and competences they activate to face and overcome these challenges. The obtained results inform the development of training programs fostering intrapersonal sustainability competence/inner development goals for transdisciplinary collaboration.

Your tasks:

1. Conduct research within living labs focused on sustainable construction, ideally employing thick-phenomenological research methods to gain deep insights into the lived experiences of stakeholders.
2. Analyze data collected from living labs to identify intrapersonal challenges and intrapersonal competencies of involved stakeholders.
3. Collaborate with transdisciplinary research teams to utilize findings for the design and facilitation of transdisciplinary collaboration processes within living labs, ensuring active participation and integration of multiple perspectives and knowledges for co-creative problem-solving.
4. Develop and implement training programs aimed at fostering intrapersonal sustainability competence among participants of living labs and other (future) professionals.
5. Engage in creative ways of sharing and spreading the knowledge obtained throughout the project (beyond scientific articles and conference presentations)
6. Note: The position also requires regular traveling to Amsterdam

You will work here
The position is affiliated with the Education and Learning Sciences Group at WUR and will be supervised by Pascal Frank. However, you will also actively collaborate with the WUR Urban Economics chair, team members from the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS institute), as well as researchers from other associated partner institutions. You can expect a highly motivated interdisciplinary research team consisting of around 10 members.

You Have / You are:

• a Ph.D. in a relevant field such as sustainability, psychology, or education
• strong proficiency in qualitative methods, ideally thick-phenomenological research methods (willingness to learn about such methods is a prerequisite)
• demonstrated experience in developing and delivering training programs, ideally focusing on intrapersonal sustainability competence / Inner development goals
• experience in transdisciplinary research/collaboration is desirable
• willingness to work in an inter- and transdisciplinary learning environment
• proficiency in English and Dutch language.

In our international working environment there is an increasing amount of communication in English. For this position it is about language level C1. If you do not yet have this level, we will of course help you and you can go to our language center Wageningen in'to Language

You can see that there are plenty of challenges ahead of you. These challenges can also be seen as development opportunities. So if you do not yet have the track-record required in the vacancy, but do have solid work experience, we would also like to invite you to apply.

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement include:

• sabbatical leave, study leave, and partially paid parental leave;
• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;
• the option to accrue additional compensation / holiday hours by working more, per week;
• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;
• a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;
• excellent pension scheme.

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will of course receive a good salary. Depending on your experience, we offer a competitive gross salary of between €3.226 and € 5.090 for a full-time working week of 38 hours, in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreements for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU) (scale 10). Initially, we offer you a one-year contract, which will then be extended to three years (in total) if there is mutual enthusiasm. Of course, we would be happy to discuss this with you if you have any questions.

Wageningen University & Research encourages internal advancement opportunities and mobility with an internal recruitment policy. There are plenty of options for personal initiative in a learning environment, and we provide excellent training opportunities. We are offering a unique position in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere.

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 19th consecutive time.

Coming from abroad
Wageningen University & Research is the university and research centre for life sciences. The themes we deal with are relevant to everyone around the world and Wageningen, therefore, has a large international community and a lot to offer to international employees.
Our team of advisors on Dutch immigration procedures will help you with the visa application procedures for yourself and, if applicable, for your family.

Feeling welcome also has everything to do with being well informed. Wageningen University & Research's International Community page contains practical information about what we can do to support international employees and students coming to Wageningen. Furthermore, we can assist you with any additional advice and information about for example helping your partner to find a job, housing, or schooling. Finally, certain categories of international staff may be eligible for a tax exemption on a part of their salary during the first five years in the Netherlands.

Wageningen University & Research

The mission of Wageningen University & Research is “To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life”. Under the banner Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen University and the specialised research institutes of the Wageningen Research Foundation have joined forces in contributing to finding solutions to important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment. With its roughly 30 branches, 7,600 employees (6,700 fte) and 13,100 students and over 150,000 participants to WUR’s Life Long Learning, Wageningen University & Research is one of the leading organisations in its domain. The unique Wageningen approach lies in its integrated approach to issues and the collaboration between different disciplines.

Read the 5 reasons why your future colleagues enjoy working at WUR and watch the video below to get an idea of our green campus!

We will recruit for the vacancy ourselves, so no employment agencies please. However, sharing in your network is appreciated.