PhD position in Engaging Tourists in Island Innovation (1.0 FTE)

The Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen, in cooperation with the FREIIA consortium, is looking for a PhD in Engaging Tourists in Island Innovation. The PhD will be employed at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen, at the department of Economic Geography. Promotor is Dimitris Ballas and co-promotor is Frans Sijtsma.

The Faculty of Spatial Sciences consists of approximately 100 members of staff, 100 PhD students and around 1000 undergraduate students. The Faculty offers a vibrant academic environment with an international staff and extensive experience in working within international research projects. We focus on high quality teaching and research in the fields of social and economic geography, demography, and spatial planning. With a single collective research theme of 'towards Wellbeing, Innovation and Spatial Transformation' (tWIST), it is our mission to produce research which is world-leading, distinctive, and policy-relevant. With two Bachelor and seven Master programmes, we provide a wide range of courses within the wider field of spatial sciences. We are
making places better together!

The project FREIIA - Facilitating Resilience Embracing Islands Innovation Approaches - is an Interreg North Sea project, in which governments and researchers from 6 countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and France) cooperate on improving the speed and impact of innovation through designing smart governance processes. We work with 5 case study islands in all countries (except Germany) as our experiment spaces. In the project North Sea islands act as special places for “spark type innovations" that offer great potential for the mainland. The project uses a bottom-up participatory approach in which community involvement is central and young entrepreneurs, students and tourists enrich the process.

Within the FREIIA project the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the UG is lead partner for the work package: Engaging Tourists in Island Innovation. In this work package the PhD student performs a series of experiments that engage tourists in island innovation using online connectivity as the main workhorse. In the research three types of tourist engagement are tested:

1. Can tourists share ideas and be creative co-creators in the island innovations?
2. Are tourists willing to support island innovation in physical terms, via helping, or testing products?
3. Are tourists willing to give donations for innovations on islands? For this work we will use the Greenmapper platform (https://www.greenmapper.org ) and will in cooperation with software developers build relevant software to support the experiments.

The PhD candidate will be supervised by Dr Frans J. Sijtsma and Prof. Dimitris Ballas.

The result of the three year PhD research is a PhD thesis with 3 or 4 international scientific publications and several reports for partners and stakeholders in the project. The PhD candidate will also be involved in the community of Research Master students following the Erasmus Mundus Islands and Sustainability track and may seek cooperation with the partners of that track in Iceland, Lesbos and Gran Canaria. The PhD work will furthermore contribute to the research theme ‘Islands: laboratories for landscape stewardship?’ of the Sustainable Landscapes research group.

The PhD candidate is responsible for:

• designing and performing the research in the above mentioned project, resulting in a PhD thesis that is defended publicly
• publishing and presenting research results
• keeping and developing relations with internal and external partners to strengthen the network of Islands and Sustainability researchers.

Giving a few guest lectures to students of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences or other programmes of UG.

We are looking for a candidate that:

• has an academic (Research) Master degree in a relevant field of study: e.g. economic or social geography, tourism studies or nature and landscape governance
• is an enthusiastic researcher that has a feel for both academic and practice oriented research
• has strong analytical capacities and can work independently
• is result oriented, perseverant and flexible.

More specifically the candidate:

• has knowledge of and interest in tourism, islands, innovation and governance
• has experience with or is strongly committed to developing online tools
• has solid experience with GIS can use both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

While furthermore the candidate:

• has experience and talent for cooperation and communication
• is fluent in English, both in speaking and writing, while speaking Dutch is a recommendation
• has affinity with academic education.

We offer you, following the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:

• a salary of € 2,541 gross per month in the first year, up to a maximum of € 3,098 gross per month in the third and final year for a full-time working week
• a holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income and an 8.3% year-end bonus
• a full-time position (1.0 FTE). The successful candidate will first be offered a temporary position of a year with the option of renewal for another two years. Prolongation of the contract is contingent on sufficient progress in the first nine months to indicate that a successful completion of the PhD thesis within the next years is to be expected. A PhD training programme is part of the agreement and the successful candidate will be enrolled in the Graduate School of Spatial Sciences.

Start date is 1 February 2023 or earlier

For information you can contact:

Dr Frans J. Sijtsma,   [email protected]

Prof. Dimitris Ballas,   [email protected]

(please do not use the email addresses above for applications)