Do you want to work towards bending the curve of biodiversity loss? And are you interested in understanding where entrepreneurial practices can promote biodiversity conservation, how current ecological loss affects entrepreneurs’ well-being, and which policies may promote conservation entrepreneurship?

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation section at the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) invites applications for a PhD position in Conservation Entrepreneurship. We are looking for talented PhD candidates with a desire to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship and the ambition to develop new methodological skills needed to succeed at the highest international academic level.

Project description
The ongoing, dramatic loss of biodiversity is widely regarded as one of humanity's most significant and pressing challenges. Biodiversity loss harms carrying capacity and resilience, affecting people in various ways, not only those who feel a close connection with nature. Furthermore, reversing such losses is difficult. Hence, action is required, which needs to go beyond macro and top-down long-term measures addressing the known drivers of biodiversity loss such as habitat loss, overexploitation, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. More immediate (and deep) mechanisms are required.

Entrepreneurship is seen as a particularly promising driver of positive change. While it is well established in the economic and business literature that entrepreneurship is a major driver of economic transformation, it remains less clear how entrepreneurs and economic and psychological entrepreneurial mechanisms can expediate such a sustainability transformation and best preserve biodiversity. This project follows recent calls for research and business activity to reconsider the diverse values of nature to help reassess connections with nature and related responsibilities.

This PhD project aims to take a scholarly entrepreneurship perspective to investigate the nexus between conservation and entrepreneurship. For example, the PhD project can explore incentive structures, personal values, attitudes and self-efficacy processes, and entrepreneurial skill development to study how entrepreneurs can promote biophilia or how conservationists can benefit from applying entrepreneurial methods. The PhD project can involve the application of a wide range of methods; that is, both qualitative and quantitative methods are suitable for further exploration of the above sketched themes (e.g., the candidate can explore associations with publicly available biodiversity indicators, gather data with help of surveys, interviews, or experiments). Ideally, the PhD project translates findings to concrete implications for research, policy, and practice, including implications for conservation entrepreneurship education and startup incubation.

What are you going to do?
You will work on several research papers intended for publication in high quality journals, which will be combined into a PhD dissertation.

Tasks and responsibilities:

• Write up findings of your research for publication in prestigious journals;
• present research findings at conferences and workshops;
• attend classes and seminars (including those offered at other universities) to further develop research skills;
• contribute to departmental research activities (e.g., participate in research seminars and research ‘lab’ meetings);
• assist in relevant teaching activities and knowledge dissemination.

You will be working as PhD candidate or 38 hours
The PhD candidate will work under the supervision of Prof. dr. Martin Obschonka and dr. Joeri Sol (as co-promotor) at the Entrepreneurship and Innovation section at the Amsterdam Business School, with possibility of a third co-promotor at a later stage.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in business administration, economics, ecology, management, psychology, or related discipline (or expected to finish by September 2024);
• an excellent command of English, both verbal and written;
• a pluralistic mindset, an openness to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship;
• commitment, perseverance and a cooperative attitude.

Preference will be given to applicants who

• Have a research master’s degree or equivalent;
• with programming skills (e.g., R, Python, C++) or experience with statistical software (e.g., GIS, JASP, Stata), and exhibits a desire to develop new methodological skills.

Knowledge or experience that are an advantage are not included in the bulleted list but mentioned in a sentence above it.

We offer full-time employment for three or four years (depending on prior education) with an initial period of 18 months, an intermediate evaluation after 18 months and a possibility to extend it for 30 months (four years in total). The end result should be a PhD thesis. An educational plan will be drafted that includes attendance of courses and conferences at home and abroad.

The gross monthly salary will range between €2,770,- in the first year to €3,539,- in the last year for full-time employment (38 hours per week), excluding holiday allowance (8%) and year-end bonus (8.3%).

The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable.

In addition, the UvA offers excellent study and development opportunities and encourages employees to continue to professionalise;

What else do we offer you?
The UvA has an extensive package of fringe benefits, including:

• 29 days' holiday with full employment & extra holidays between Christmas and the New Year;
• Excellent work (from home) facilities;
• reimbursement of commuting expenses;
• pension accrual with ABP;
• In addition, the UvA offers excellent study and development opportunities and encourages employees to continue their professional development;
• You may participate in the open UvA lectures with which you can earn up to 30 credits per year.

Faculty of Economics and Business

The Amsterdam Business School is part of the University of Amsterdam, Economics and Business. The School belongs to the 1% of the business schools in the world with a Triple Crown accreditation. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation section of the Amsterdam Business School has a vibrant young faculty of 16 faculty members and 6 PhD candidates. The section organizes a weekly seminar series and bi-annual social events.

The University of Amsterdam is the largest university in the Netherlands, offering the broadest range of degree programmes. An intellectual hub with 42,000 students, 6,000 staff members and 3,000 PhD candidates, all connected by a shared culture of intellectual curiosity.

Find more information about Economics and Business on uva.nl/eb.
Find more information about the Amsterdam Business School on abs.uva.nl.

To know more about working at the University of Amsterdam, please check this link and uva.nl/working-at-eb