The Department of Geography, Planning and International Development at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) invites applications for three tenure-track Assistant Professor positions.

We are interested in attracting early career academics in the fields of geography, planning and/or international development studies or other related cognate disciplines, who are passionate about both teaching and research. Candidates should have demonstrated experience in teaching and a strong track record of international peer-reviewed publications.

The department is looking for colleagues with an innovative research agenda and teaching interests across several thematic, methodological and disciplinary fields. Candidates whose training and/or experience covers several of the following fields are specifically encouraged to apply.

We are especially interested in strengthening our department’s thematic and methodological expertise in the following areas:

• urban sustainability and urban political ecology;
• digital geographies, smart cities and urban technologies;
• geographies of food, from the urban to the global;
• urban mobilities;
• (Dutch) spatial planning and governance;
• GIS with affinity and knowledge of qualitative methods;
• economic geography;
• political geography. 

What are you going to do

• teaching in our core Bachelor, Master and Research Master level courses;
• teaching in our research methods courses, including mixed methods;
• teaching in our skills courses (such as professional and academic skills and fieldwork preparation);
• Bachelor and Master level thesis supervision;
• research and publishing;
• proposal writing and project acquisition;
• PhD supervision.

• a PhD in Human Geography, Planning or International Development Studies (or related disciplines);
• experience with Bachelor or Master level teaching;
• a promising scientific research record (including peer reviewed publications in international scientific journals);
• demonstrated ability or potential to acquire research funding from external sources (e.g. E.U Marie Curie, Netherlands’ Organization for Scientific Research, European Research Council, or other national and international funding agencies);

• fluent in English and willing to acquire good active and passive knowledge of the Dutch language within two years;
• in possession of the Basic Teaching Qualification Certificate (Dutch or foreign equivalent) or willing to acquire this certificate within two years.

Our preferred candidate is:

• a team player as expressed in collaborative work;
• a colleague whose expertise both connects to and extends that of the department's researchers;
• willing to take on the challenge of teaching new material that may be outside their comfort zone;
• able to teach in both English, with the expectation to be able to teach in Dutch in the future - within an appropriate time frame;
• committed to the research agenda of the department.

Fixed-term contract: 2 years.

The positions are opened as full-time contracts with the intention to offer the successful candidates a permanent employment contract, subject to a two-year probation period, and continuation of sufficient fund availability. Salary depends on past education and relevant work experience, with a minimum salary of €3,746.- and a maximum salary of €5,127.- gross per month based on a full-time contract for a 38-hour working week (in keeping with scale 11, as per the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities). We additionally offer an extensive package of secondary employee benefits, including a generous holiday scheme and year-end bonus. Because we value your continued personal development and professionalisation, we also offer excellent opportunities for study and development. 

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

The Faculty and the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies

The Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies (GPIO) is embedded within the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). The department is organized around four programme groups/disciplines : Urban Geographies; Political and Economic Geography; Urban Planning; and Governance and Inclusive Development. We welcome applications from candidates from these four, and from any related cognate disciplines.  The successful candidates will be assigned to the disciplinary group that is most relevant to their own research profile.  The department offers a BSc Human Geography and Planning (Dutch is language of instruction), a MSc Human Geography, a MSc Urban and Regional Planning, a MSc International Development Studies, a Research Master Urban Studies and a Research Master International Development Studies. (The MSc’s are all taught in English.)

The department combines research across human geography, planning and international development studies, with a shared emphasis on the spatiality of social, economic, and environmental processes. Our research tradition is characterised by its critical and publicly engaged approach to urgent socio-spatial issues. Our collective mission is to develop empirically grounded, conceptually innovative contributions to intellectual and societal debates, always informed by a sensitivity to the spatial dimension of social phenomena and processes. We focus on the intersections of social, built and natural environments, and emphasise the importance of deploying spatial concepts such as scale, place, territoriality, flows, networks, mobility and landscape to investigate the how and why of social issues. We are committed to mobilising our research expertise to address collective action problems and real-world challenges associated with pursuing equality, sustainability and economic development.

Given our emphasis on both theoretical development and societal relevance, our research ranges from more conceptual endeavours aimed at shifting academic debates, to more concrete, empirical policy-oriented projects. Many of these projects are developed together with local – such as the municipality of Amsterdam -, national and international– such as the UN – stakeholders, and actors in the Global North and the Global South.  Across the department, our scholarship benefits from a commitment to methodological pluralism, and our research draws on a wide range of qualitative, quantitative and spatial methods, from ethnography and statistical analysis to action research and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

The department’s diverse, internationally-oriented staff plays active and influential roles in both academic and societal debates. Our strong international reputation, and impact is evidenced, in our consistently high scores in the widely-used QS global subject rankings (Development Studies ranked 17th and Geography 18th in 2020).

To work at the UvA is to work in a discerning, independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterized by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.