Are you fascinated by the question of how we can transition to a circular and sustainable society without creating further damage and injustice? And are you interested in quantifying a range of environmental effects? This PhD project develops improved methods to include future developments and justice aspects into environmental impact assessment methods and applies them to real-world challenges. The research takes place in a multidisciplinary research group, involving social and natural scientists as well as humanities scholars, with a focus to work on sustainability transitions.
You will do research on prospective impact assessment for just transitions, centered around the question:
How can we estimate prospective impacts of environmental damage on human health and justice? As a first example we will quantify impacts caused by air pollution related to circular innovations and transition pathways.
Current methods, like LCA, can assess the sustainability of value chains, business models or behavior. Although they are increasingly capable to take into account future characteristics of emerging technologies and circularity strategies, impact assessment methods are generally lagging behind. Moreover, while many assessment methods focus on environmental or social damages, justice implications of these damages are hardly addressed, let alone quantified. The objective of the PhD project is to develop and apply methods to assess the prospective impacts of environmental pollution on human health impacts and the justice implications of innovations and transition pathways. To achieve this goal you will derive indicators for footprint assessment, work with natural science based environmental models, prospective LCA and/or input-output analysis as well as the justice literature and just sustainability transition concepts. This PhD position is part of the Dutch stimulation program 'Sectorplannen Bètawetenschappen 2023 (BÈTA II) focus point 'circulariteit en duurzaamheidstransities'.
The Technology, Innovation, and Society
(TIS) group at Eindhoven University of Technology straddles natural science, social science and humanities disciplines and provides a stimulating and collaborative environment. The TIS group is part of the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences (IE&IS). Research at TIS concerns how humans and societies bring about technological change, and how technological innovations change society. With ~25 tenured staff and a large group of postdocs and PhD candidates, researchers in the TIS group try to bridge the engineering and social sciences in a systems perspective on sustainability transitions. The TIS staff teaches in the BSc program 'Sustainable Innovation', the MSc programs 'Sustainable Energy Technologies' and 'Innovation Management', and in university-wide programs for engineers.