Are you keen to contribute to increasing residents’ accessibility to daily activities using the 15-min city concept? Would you like to do empirical work on perceptions of residents and enhance measures of calculated accessibility with information on perceived accessibility and actual travel behavior? Do you have experience with GIS tools? Do you have experience with (or are you eager to learn and use) quantitative and qualitative research methods? Then, you could be the ideal Postdoc candidate to join our team!

The Department of Planning and Environment (Faculty of Spatial Sciences) has a new position for a postdoctoral researcher in the field of Accessibility. The researcher will become part of a new 3-year research project (AccessCity4All) funded by NWO, under the JPI Urban Europe programme, which aims to enhance the 15-minute-city concept to respond to the diversity of accessibility needs within populations across a variety of urban forms in Europe. The project consortium consists of universities and research institutes in 5 countries including Austria, Germany, Portugal, Turkey, and the Netherlands each of which also collaborate with municipalities and/provinces in their home country. Based on empirical work integrating measures of calculated accessibility with information on perceived and realized accessibility, the consortium will present an actionable, people-centred, and place-sensitive conceptualization of the 15-minute-city. The project applies a mixed-method Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach in five European cities/regions. Each ULL combines a place-based, empirical framework with large-scale digital participatory mapping methods (Public Participation GIS, PPGIS) and in-depth qualitative methods i.e., Walk-Along-Interviews (WAI) with residents and co-creational workshops with local stakeholders.

The Post Doctoral researcher will closely collaborate with and is supervised by Dr. Samira Ramezani as the project lead at RUG, Dr. Ward Rauws, Dr. Felix Pot, and Prof. Taede Tillema.

Which activities will you undertake?

- analyze existing accessibility to services and the current state of accessibility planning in the case of the province of Groningen, and, together with the consortium partners, develop a PPGIS survey to be conducted in 5 EU regions to elicit information about perceived accessibility and actual travel behavior of residents
- conduct Walk-Along-Interviews with local residents in the case of the Province of Groningen
- analyse Survey and Walk-along interview data of the case of Groningen
- an important part of the project is co-design of research and co-creation of knowledge with a wide variety of consortium partners from various EU regions and stakeholders from the province of Groningen. Good communication and organizational skills are therefore important assets
- attend consortium meetings (online and onsite in the partner countries).

Which output are you expected to deliver?

- publish research results in international peer-reviewed journals and policy-oriented journals
- contribute to project tasks, milestones and deliverables, and contribute to project management, meetings and activities (e.g. workshop organisation)
- occasionally, you may teach in Bachelor and Master educational programmes and supervise Bachelor and Master students theses.


The Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen provides education and research within Geography, Demography, and Planning. The research theme is Wellbeing, Innovation and Spatial Transformation. With two bachelor and seven master programmes, the faculty offers a wide range of courses to 1,000 students. We are making places better together! For further information visit the webpage of the faculty at https://www.rug.nl/frw/

The successful applicant will join a team of international world-class researchers, receive extensive individual academic training and support, and will be given wide opportunities to participate in scientific conferences and meetings.