Background

COOLSCHOOLS is a three-year project that will start on the 1st of March 2022. The COOLSCHOOLS consortium encompasses 16 partners from 5 countries: Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, France and Serbia.

COOLSCHOOLS is a transdisciplinary applied urban research project that examines the transformative potential of nature-based solutions (NBS) to support the creation of climate shelters in European school environments. We assess how nature-based climate shelters can drive social-ecological transformations towards urban sustainability, climate resilience, social justice, and quality education at multiple urban scales and translate them into practical building capacity for school communities and beyond. Building on pioneering pilot NBS projects of school transformation in Barcelona, Brussels, Paris, and Rotterdam, COOLSCHOOLS unravels the specificities of each context and finds common patterns related to climate shelters transformation capacities, focusing on marginalized groups. Through participatory and co-creation methodologies, we propose an interdisciplinary approach that combines natural, bio-medical, social and education sciences. To further promote a holistic approach to school climate shelters transformation capacities, we will actively disseminate the pilots' best practices and key learnings among city governments, urban planners, companies, school communities and other relevant stakeholders. The consortium's cross-sectoral composition ensures active multi-stakeholder involvement through an urban living lab and other co-engagement actions, that are planned to boost reflection and learning, and the wider use of COOLSCHOOLS outputs.

We will mainly work on one work package (WP4: Socio-cultural transformations) and contribute to almost all other. WP4 investigates the role of perception of quality and safety of school climate shelters to determine the capacity of these NBS to initiate socio-cultural transformations of school environments and wider neighbourhoods through exploring and validating the interactive approach of Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) with users.

Your tasks include contributing to:

• identifying the state-of-the-art relationship between perceived safety and quality/amenity characteristics of NBS;
• unearthing the impact of NBS qualities/ amenities and safety aspects on the use of public space and climate shelters;
• sharing and reflecting with the school communities about NBS safety and quality characteristics, and their related potential as climate shelters;
• analysing the FCM network data as scenarios and identifying the potential of certain qualities of the climate shelters in initiating a socio-cultural transformation of the school environment and neighbourhood.

You should have:

• A strong interest in climate change, climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation;
• An MSc degree in Environmental Studies, Environmental Engineering, Geography, Urban Planning, or similar.
• A proven interest in / affinity with inter- and transdisciplinary work.
• Experience with both qualitative (social science methods such as surveys and interviews, involving stakeholders, etc.) and quantitative research methods (statistics, statistical modelling)
• Experience in GIS and remote sensing, preferably open software applications.
• Excellent oral and written English language skills.
• Interest to work in an international environment.
• Willingness to travel across Europe for stakeholder meetings and field work.
• Good communication and collaboration skills.
• Knowing the Dutch Language or willingness to learn the Dutch Language is an advantage.

We offer you an inspiring multidisciplinary and challenging international and academic environment. The university offers a dynamic ecosystem with enthusiastic colleagues in which internationalisation is an important part of the strategic agenda. We offer a position for a period of four years. Salary and conditions will be in accordance with the Collective Labor Agreement (CAO-NU) of the Dutch Universities.

• A starting salary of € 2,443.00 in the first year and a salary of € 3,122.00 in the fourth year gross per month;
• Tailor-made educational/development programme of at least 6 months (30EC), including visits to conferences;
• A holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary and a year-end bonus of 8.3%;
• A solid pension scheme;
• A total of 41 holiday days in case of full-time employment;
• Professional and personal development programmes;
• Costs for moving to Enschede may be reimbursed.

The Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management (PGM) of the University of Twente's Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation works on the linkage of geospatial technologies with both Urban Planning & Management and Land Administration. The department takes the role of people as central in all development and research processes and looks at governance decisions for the sustainable future of urban regions and their hinterlands. The work of the department concentrates on both, the Global North and South, with a particular focus on the global South, while being highly related to global challenges as described in the SDGs.