PhD position: Transition Pathways Technology-for-Ecology-based Farming

a (4 year) PhD candidate to study expectations and imaginaries and explore possible transition pathways related to the new concept of 'Technology-4-Ecology-based Farming' (T4E). The PhD project is part of the Synergia project that aims to develop ecological forms of arable, dairy and horticulture farming and new types of technological and socio-technical systems that challenge current forms of agriculture https://technology4ecology.org/. The successful candidate will investigate the implicit and explicit concepts and visions of these new forms of farming and identify challenges and tensions. These insights will feed into exploration of socio-technical scenarios and transition pathways, which will be conducted together with stakeholders and partners in the project. This will serve as a basis to deduce requirements and options for responsibly governing transformative change. The PhD will become a member of the Science, Technology & Policy Studies (STePS) group, and will be supervised by dr. Kornelia Konrad and prof.dr. Esther Turnhout.

The Synergia project is a crossover program funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Synergia goes beyond current precision agriculture and precision livestock farming and is developing the new concept of 'Technology-4-Ecology-based farming'. Our multi-disciplinary team with biology, ecology, agronomy, technology and social science backgrounds, will explore how current and future farming technologies can enable and support truly ecology-based farming systems https://technology4ecology.org.

In this interdisciplinary program you will work together with other PhD candidates, both from social sciences and with candidates working on developing technologies and applications in line with the T4E approach. In this way we aim to ensure the findings in this work are providing insight into the societal value of actual technologies on the one hand and allowing societal perspectives to influence technology development on the other.