PhD Position Designing Dignified Learning Pathways for Collective Climate Action

Do you believe that learning can drive climate action? Join TU Delft to co-design transformative learning pathways that place human dignity at the core of collective responses to just climate action. 

Job description

With the growing urgency of addressing climate change, educational initiatives are increasingly required to foster participatory, interdisciplinary, and value-driven learning. The remaining question is: How to design learning pathways where all actors involved feel seen, heard, and capable of contributing meaningfully to climate action?

A powerful approach is to design educational pathways grounded in dignity and justice, enriching learning for individuals, between groups, and at a societal level. Designing for dignity further allows communities and students to participate actively in shaping inclusive, locally relevant, and sustainable climate action. Then, a clear challenge and opportunity emerges in co-creating with local communities within and around the cities in which the students’ universities are located. Co-developing education and climate plans with those most affected by climate change ensures their needs are addressed. When students co-create in their own cities, they better grasp and follow up on the impacts. Acknowledging local university and organizational dynamics strengthens their knowledge systems and supports lasting local action.

An example where a dignified learning pathway is needed is in the design of community-based workshops and student-led initiatives. These workshops and initiatives can unite scientific knowledge and local experience to drive societal transformation. But how can we enable knowledge exchange across generations, disciplines, and worldviews—from sharing to integration to action?

This PhD project aims to define, design, and validate dignified learning pathways that foster just and collaborative climate action. It seeks to understand how educational approaches can be co-created to center dignity efforts toward climate justice. The current key challenges include:

(1) addressing the fragmentation between individual and collective action in climate learning

(2) bridging normative values (dignity and justice) with practical learning designs, and

(3) evaluating how dignified learning environments can facilitate sustained engagement.

The PhD will use participatory design approaches and explore how the design learning pathways that better connect diverse citizens, student-led initiatives, educational, and societal organizations. The PhD will further consider how these pathways might evolve across different cultural and institutional settings. It will contribute to emerging or established collaborations between science and society at the intersection of sustainability transitions, climate education, and design for values. Outcomes include a conceptual framework for dignified, collective learning processes in support of climate justice.

Key responsibilities include:

• Conducting mixed-methods research—combining interviews, surveys, and experiments—to explore and define the necessary learning pathways and real-life examples of climate at key neighborhoods differing in culture, socio-economic conditions, and levels of climate awareness and technological access.
• Designing a prototype learning pathway on comparable climate-related actions across the neighborhoods that connect citizens and student-led initiatives, seeing the cities and the universities as multifunctional and connected spaces where students, staff, and citizens live, study, work, and enjoy life (long learning) for climate action.
• Conducting experiments to implement, validate, and evaluate these learning pathways and connected initiatives to adjust as necessary, the latter aspects that are rarely touched upon in this type of collaboration.
• Delivering actionable guidelines and recommendations for designing dignified learning pathways that provide recommendations to students, teachers, and societal actors beyond those participating in this study.

Job requirements

• A master's degree in a design-related discipline focusing on policy, environmental sciences, sustainable development, architecture, and engineering education, or another field that provides domain knowledge in the field of coupled social-environmental systems, climate change adaptation, or global environmental change.
• Previous experience with carrying out transdisciplinary, participatory, action, or other related research approaches is a plus.
• Completed a well-written master's thesis, which demonstrates comfort with conceptual abstraction as well as practical application of scientific knowledge.
• Experience with qualitative (i.e., ethnography, participatory observation, text analysis, interviewing, etc.) and/or quantitative case study analysis (i.e., quantitative comparison analysis), and/or other mixed methods approaches.
• Strong academic writing skills, with a strong interest in publishing in peer-reviewed journals.
• Excellent written and spoken command of English (C2). For more details, please check the Graduate Schools Admission Requirements: https://www.tudelft.nl/onderwijs/opleidingen/phd/admission.  

TU Delft

Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Technology, Policy and Management

The Faculty of TPM provides an important contribution to solving complex technical-social issues, such as energy transition, mobility, digitalisation, water management and (cyber) security. TPM does this with its excellent education and research at the intersection of technology, society and policy. We combine insights from both engineering and social sciences as well as the humanities. TPM develops robust models and designs, is internationally oriented and has an extensive network of knowledge institutions, companies, social organisations and governments.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management.

Conditions of employment 

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met. 

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from € 2872 per month in the first year to € 3670 in the fourth year. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills. 

The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged.  

Will you need to relocate to the Netherlands for this job? TU Delft is committed to make your move as smooth as possible! The HR unit, Coming to Delft Service, offers information on their website to help you prepare your relocation. In addition, Coming to Delft Service organises events to help you settle in the Netherlands, and expand your (social) network in Delft. A Dual Career Programme is available, to support your accompanying partner with their job search in the Netherlands.  

Additional information

For more information about this vacancy, please contact Dr. Fatima-Zahra Abou Eddahab-Burke and Dr. Juliette Cortes-Arevalo, who will jointly supervise the study with Prof. Dr. Martijn Warnier as the promotor. For questions about the recruitment process, please contact Martine van de Vorst, HR Advisor, via recruitment-tbm@tudelft.nl.

Application procedure

Are you interested in this vacancy? Please apply no later than 22 August 2025 via the application button and upload the following documents:

• Motivational letter addressing the supervisory team, including a short description of your research interests and the way you would like to approach this study (max. 2 pages).

• Your detailed CV, including a list of publications, and the title of your MSc. thesis.

• Diplomas and an official list of all courses followed during your BSc and MSc studies with grades (or preliminary grade transcript if still finishing up your MSc).

• A writing sample (usually a publication or the master thesis), in which you demonstrate your curiosity-driven mindset and a passion for doing research.    

Doing a PhD at TU Delft requires English proficiency at a certain level to ensure that the candidate is able to communicate and interact well, participate in English-taught Doctoral Education courses, and write scientific articles and a final thesis. For more details please check the Graduate Schools Admission Requirements. 

Please note:

• You can apply online. We will not process applications sent by email and/or post. 
• A pre-employment screening can be part of the selection procedure.
• For the final candidates, a knowledge security check will be part of the application procedure. For more information on this check, please consult Chapter 8 of the National Knowledge Security Guidelines. We carry out this check on the basis of legitimate interest.
• Please do not contact us for unsolicited services.