The Water Resources Management group is looking for an Assistant Professor in the field of Agricultural Water Management. Building on insights from irrigation, agronomy, hydrology and water engineering you will study design, planning and use practices of agricultural water systems, and link these to societal and policy questions of sustainable development, food security and climate change adaptation. Specific attention could be given to the issue of shifting across scales (e.g. field, farm, system, basin, landscape), as this may redress societal objectives and/or alter the normative interpretation of sustainability or efficiency of water use. The Assistant Professor should be able to bridge the natural and social sciences, by linking these science fields to policy and spatial planning. This could for instance involve critical evaluations of agricultural performance, agro-hydrological simulation tools and the effects across space (field, farm, basin) and time (drought, climate change) in the context of the water-food-environment nexus policy and planning.
Education (40% time allocation)
The Assistant Professor will have the following education responsibilities, to be further developed based on experience and interest:
- Inputs to and further development of the Bachelor and Master International Land and Water Management courses, such as , 'Irrigation and Water Management', 'Land and Water Engineering' 'Design in Land and Water Management 1 and 2', 'Water System Design for Water Use from Multiple Sources' and 'Water Delivery'.
- Education innovation;
- Supervise PhD, MSc and BSc students.
Research (40% time allocation)
- The candidate will be expected to develop and implement a research agenda that will strengthen the group's capacity in the broader field of agricultural water management that fits the interdisciplinary research of the Water Resources Management Group (see above and https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Chair-groups/Environmental-Sciences/Water-Resources-Management.htm). Such an agenda can focus on agricultural water management processes at different levels as well as on policy-science interface issues, such as food production in urbanised coastal regions, water-food-energy nexus in arid areas, circular food production in cities or on the role of models in scientific assessments and policy processes.
Projects and general chair group work (20% time allocation)
The Assistant Professor will work partly on projects that link research, capacity-building and policy support in the field of Agricultural Water Management at the science-policy interface. You will be involved in the acquisition of these projects.