Utrecht University invites applications for three Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Fellowships funded as part of the Marie Curie European Training Networks, under the European Commission’s H2020 Framework Programme. The recruited ESRs will join the project 'Policies for Smart Specialisation' as PhD Researchers of the Department of Human Geography and Planning at the Faculty of Geosciences (curriculum Economic Geography).
The activity of the three ESRs will start at the beginning of a.y. 2020-21 (September).
Policies for Smart Specialisation (POLISS) is a European Training Network for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) including 7 leading European academic institutions and 14 partners spanning local governments, development agencies, international organizations, research institutes and private companies. Smart Specialisation is a successful innovation policy concept which has become a cornerstone of the European cohesion policy and also addresses several of the Sustainable Development Goals. POLISS brings together a diverse set of actors from all the fields contributing to Smart Specialisation. Building on their expertise and everyday engagement with SmartSpec policies, POLISS aims at: a) providing new systematic evidence and methodological tools to scholars, policy makers and local practitioners for designing and assessing SmartSpec actions in EU regions and beyond; b) building a PhD programme where a new generation of experts in regional development and innovation policy will be trained and once graduated will be possibly employed in regional, national and European private or public organisations that work on regional development and innovation; c) providing a forum for coordinating the vast community of researchers and practitioners working on local development and innovation, which is often sparse and fragmented.
Within the broader scope of the project, the specific PhD projects at Utrecht University will focus on the following themes:
ESR 6 - Design and implementation of Smart Specialisation strategies: How to set priorities in EU regional cohesion policy? Should regions base their policies on bottom up approaches? How to translate priorities into a roadmap of activities? How can regions implement these action plans and make them effective? The success or failure of Smart Spec policies depend crucially on how they are designed and implemented. Improving these processes is crucial for the economic development of regions that are recipient of EU cohesion funds. The objective of this project is to design and test methodologies and scripts in order to improve radically the procedures of Smart Spec design and implementation. Jointly with the WIPO team the PhD candidate will build methodological tools based on patent and publication data to support the process of setting priorities and design policies. The project will focus in particular on transition and less advanced regions within the EU and beyond.
ESR 8 -Talents and Regional Diversification in the EU: The competitiveness and innovative capacity of regions relies more and more on their ability to attract talented workers. However, the shortage of skilled workers has led to a race for talents both within Europe and worldwide. By mapping the knowledge space of EU regions we investigate which ones are better positioned to attract talents, and which talents they can attract. We also investigate the impact of foreign talents on regional innovation performance. For this analysis we will make use of European publicly available dataset (e.g. European labour survey, EPO patent data), national datasets (e.g. employer-employees matching data) and web-based data (e.g. LinkedIn). Although they are often considered key assets for regions, there is also a backlash against migrants as they compete with locals for jobs, in particular in high skilled jobs. The project will provide a contribution to the academic and policy debates on the role of knowledge migrant workers within the EU.
ESR9 - digitalization and regional resilience in the EU: Digitalization and automation will have a huge impact on regional performance. Studies have attempted to identify which jobs and skills in the labour market are threatened. This project will map for all European regions where these jobs and skills under threat are located in the EU, and which regions will be more negatively affected. Then, we will use the relatedness framework developed at Utrecht University to identify which regions will have alternative job opportunities to absorb the redundant ones, and thus will show most resilience. Finally, we will identify which regions will host the new jobs and skills needed to participate in the new digital era. For this analysis, we will make use of European publicly available datasets (e.g. European labour survey, EPO patent data) and national datasets (e.g. employer-employees matching data). This Phd project will provide a contribution to the academic and policy debates on the effects of digitalization and automation within the EU.
Tasks of the PhD Researchers consist of (but are not limited to):
- conducting scientific research;
- data analyses;
- publishing results in scientific journals and presentations in high-quality international conferences in these fields;
- collaboration with academic and non-academic partners in the POLISS consortium;
- developing teaching skills. Candidates are expected to contribute to the teaching programme of the department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning to a limited degree (up to 10%). It may also involve the supervision of Master's projects;
- academic secondment of three months to Bocconi University (ESR6 and ESR8), Ingenio Research Center in Valencia (ESR9) to connect with co-supervisor and research group;
- non-academic secondment of three months to WIPO-UN (ESR6), the Rabobank Group (ESR8) and Utrecht Economic Board (ESR9);
- attendance of three summer schools (Utrecht, Pécs, Valencia) and two winter schools (Milan, Stavanger).
Your responsibilities:
- start the project preferably in September 2020;
- meet the goals/deadlines set out in the project proposal;
- complete a PhD thesis within the 4-year contract period.