1 Postdoctoral position on "The role of 'smart cycling' living labs in urban mobility transitions" in Netherlands | Utrecht University

Cycling is booming in many Dutch cities. While smart cycling innovations promise to increase the cycling modal share in the (peri-)urban transport system even further, little is understood of their impacts or costs and benefits. The “Smart Cycling Futures (SCF)” program investigates how smart cycling innovations ─ including ICT-enabled cycling innovations, infrastructures, and social innovations like new business models ─ contribute to more resilient and liveable Dutch urban regions. Cycling innovations benefit urban regions in terms of accessibility, equality, health, liveability, and decreasing CO2-emissions when socially well embedded. To facilitate a transition to a sustainable future that responds to pressing issues, the SCF research project runs urban living labs in close collaboration with key stakeholders to develop transdisciplinary insights in the conditions for upscaling smart-cycling initiatives. Each living lab involves real-world experiments and responds to the urgent challenges that urban regions and their stakeholders face today.

This postdoc position is responsible for one of the five SCF sub-projects. This sub-project theorizes on the role of living labs in smart cycling transitions, ensures conceptual and empirical synthesis between the sub-projects, and engages in international comparisons with selected cities elsewhere. To achieve this the postdoc will review and integrate the relevant academic literature about cycling, living labs, and long-term sociotechnical transitions. Next, the postdoc will engage with living labs around cycling innovations in four Dutch cities affiliated with the program and closely work together with the coordinators to ensure alignment between sub-projects. Finally, the postdoc will carry out an international comparison of smart cycling innovations in six front-running cities.

Requirements

We are looking for a post-doc with a PhD in transition studies, urban planning, urban studies, geography, science and technology studies, or innovation studies. The candidate should have a strong interest and preferably proven experiences in interdisciplinary research that links these fields. He/she should have (preferably proven) willingness to work as a ‘team player’ in the transdisciplinary consortium of urban and regional partners. Knowledge on transition theories, living labs and/or cycling is desired. The candidate should have published in international ‘peer reviewed' journals and/or in books published by internationally recognized publishers. The candidate should have excellent communication and writing skills in English and Dutch or exhibit a strong capacity to become familiar with these languages on the short term.

The tasks of the Post Doc will be following:

A. Research (80%)

• International comparison of cycling innovations in their context
• Conceptual and methodological development at the intersection of transitions research, living labs, and cycling.

B. Teaching (10%)

• provide general, specialist and methodological education in the Bachelor's and/or Master's programmes in which the two research groups are involved
• and/or supervising undergraduate or graduate students

C. Management (10%)

• Support integration (content and process) between the four PhD projects that are part of this research programme.

Conditions of employment

The postdoc position is shared between the University of Utrecht (0.5 fte) and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (Urban Planning group) of the University of Amsterdam (0.5 fte).

Employment conditions are based on the Collective Labour Agreement of the Dutch Universities. Based on the experience and qualifications of the candidate, the gross monthly salary is between € 2,532.00 and € 3,997.00 (salary scale 10) on a fulltime basis. The salary is supplemented by a holiday allowance of 8% per year and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.

Utrecht University offers a pension scheme, collective insurance schemes and flexible employment conditions (multiple choice model). Facilities for sports and child care are available on our campus, which is only 15 minutes away from the historical city center of Utrecht.