As a PhD candidate, you will conduct research for four years under the guidance of various colleagues to generate relevant results for Dutch society and the legal community. The subject of your PhD dissertation, focusing on sustainability in the agricultural sector, falls within the RENFORCE research programme and the UU strategic theme Pathways to sustainability and will be organised in consultation with the supervisors, dr. P.S. (Pauline) Phoa, dr. N. (Nikolaos) Giannopoulos and prof. dr. S.A. (Sybe) de Vries.

The agricultural sector is a key contributor to climate change, and is at the same time deeply affected by it: dry spells cause bad harvests, creating scarcity and high food prices. The EU agricultural policy has recently aimed at limiting the environmental impact of farming whilst ensuring food supply. However, in the face of the current climate crisis, merely limiting environmental damage is not sufficient: an environmentally neutral, or even positive effect is now desirable. A system of circular or even regenerative agriculture can contribute to improved soil health, relatively low-cost climate change mitigation (such as carbon sequestering), increased biodiversity and better air and water quality - all without compromising yield.

This development raises questions about how EU laws and policies can be shaped so as to effectively and coherently support Member States’ agricultural sectors in the transition to sustainable agricultural practices. The PhD research will engage with this question, identifying the legal opportunities and obstacles for the adoption of a circular or regenerative agricultural system in the EU. Many different EU legal instruments affect the agri-food sector, such as the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), various EU environmental and health & safety norms, and various EU Green Deal instruments, such as the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies as well as the expected ‘Carbon Farming' regulatory framework. The transition of the agricultural sector to a circular or regenerative system is, however, also connected to larger trends towards sustainability and circularity globally (such as the SDGs and the Paris and Basel agreements) which also need to be taken into account to provide a coherent normative framework. 

Your letter of motivation should ideally express what appeals to you about this broad subject, and the ideas you have about the execution of the PhD research (such as research question, methodology, suggestion for case studies, normative and/or critical theoretical framework). After we complete the selection interviews, we will discuss the options for the research topic together with the chosen candidate.

In addition to setting up and conducting your own research, you will also devote some of your time to sharing knowledge by participating in internal and external research meetings and by helping to organise such meetings. A portion of your working hours will also be set aside for training and development, for example by attending courses for PhD candidates. A small percentage of your time will be allocated to gaining teaching experience.