Are you interested to explore the potential of transdisciplinary landscape design to contribute to transformative societal change? Would you like to contribute to theory and methodology development for systemic designing on the regional scale? Then you could be the ideal PhD candidate to join our team!
Today’s society faces major environmental challenges, such as climate change adaptation, sustainable resource management and biodiversity decline. Small-scale, sectoral solutions will not suffice to address these challenges adequately and comprehensively. Instead, far-reaching societal change is needed. Landscape architects have an important role to play in fostering these changes. Designing long-term future perspectives and strategies towards these futures can provide insight into how to address the current challenges in an integrated and transformative manner. For example, by revealing potential spatial and temporal synergies between, zero-emission and circular agriculture, water storage, renewable energy, and nature-inclusive urbanization.
Designing for transformative change comes with high complexity and requires a systemic approach with due attention to both the spatial and temporal characteristics of landscapes and the processes within it. Thereby the potential to foster real-world change lies not only in the outcome of the design process (i.e. the design), but even more so in the design process (i.e. the designing). This calls upon, amongst others, a design process that is transdisciplinary and embraces a post-anthropocentric perspective on human-nature relationships, a process-oriented role of designers as well as greater attention to temporality, dynamics and uncertainty in the design process.
It is yet unknown what preconditions should be met for transdisciplinary regional design processes to act as a stimulus for systemic change in rural areas, whilst offering a robust framework for evidence-based, transformative spatial strategies. The Landscape Architecture Group is therefore looking for a PhD researcher that can contribute to a theoretical and methodological basis for ‘transdisciplinary, systemic design for transformative change’.
This research should explore questions such as: What preconditions should transdisciplinary regional design processes meet to enable accounting for the spatio-temporal relationships between environmental challenges and solutions, as well as between human and non-humans? Which methods, techniques and technologies can be used to analyze and visualize the spatio-temporal relationships in socio-ecological patterns and processes? How can these be embedded in transdisciplinary, long-term regional design processes?

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Contributing to the development of methodological recommendations in designing and implementing a transdisciplinary design process aiming to contribute to transformative change in rural areas;
• Developing design guidelines that support landscape architects in designing with spatio-temporal relationships on the regional scale that effectuate long-term, systemic change;
• Setting up and carrying out the above-mentioned research, resulting in, among other things, a dissertation containing at least three international scientific publications, which will be defended in public;
• Presenting the research and intermediate research results in the Netherlands and at international scientific conferences;
• Actively participating and contributing to the PhD community of the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning cluster.

• Contributing to the development of methodological recommendations in designing and implementing a transdisciplinary design process aiming to contribute to transformative change in rural areas;
• Developing design guidelines that support landscape architects in designing with spatio-temporal relationships on the regional scale that effectuate long-term, systemic change;
• Setting up and carrying out the above-mentioned research, resulting in, among other things, a dissertation containing at least three international scientific publications, which will be defended in public;
• Presenting the research and intermediate research results in the Netherlands and at international scientific conferences;
• Actively participating and contributing to the PhD community of the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning cluster