PhD Position: Participatory Data Governance for a Just Energy Transition Delft University of Technology in Netherlands

This PhD project at Delft University of Technology focuses on participatory data governance for a just energy transition, within the FEDERATE NWO project. The research asks how energy data sharing can support city-level policy making with digital twins while also addressing questions of justice, trust, power, and shared stewardship.

The doctoral candidate will work on Work Package 2 of FEDERATE and collaborate with residents, local organisations, municipalities, grid operators, and technology partners. The project combines social and organisational design with technical work on data-sharing interfaces, privacy, forgetting mechanisms, and interoperable digital twins. A central aim is to make energy data practices more understandable, negotiable, and accountable for people who contribute data and for the communities affected by its use.

The research will investigate how energy data is currently collected, shared, and used, and whose needs, risks, efforts, and knowledge are recognised in those processes. Using interviews, data ethnography, stakeholder and power mapping, and participatory workshops, the PhD candidate will build an understanding of both personal energy data and wider energy system data.

Working with project partners and communities in Heiloo and Alkmaar, the student will develop and test a participatory data governance framework informed by Human-Data Interaction and Energy Data Justice. The project includes inclusive workshop facilitation, role play, serious games, and scenario-based co-design to explore governance roles, decision processes, data access and control arrangements, and ways for people to question or revise data-sharing terms.

The student will also design and prototype social and digital interactions that help people understand data practices and join governance processes, including approaches for those who are digitally excluded or less often represented. Another part of the project is to explore fair incentives and ways for value created through data sharing to flow back to those contributing data, effort, or local knowledge. The work will result in an onboarding playbook and a practical governance and stewardship toolkit, and findings will be translated into governance requirements and data-rights constraints for the project’s technical researchers.

The position is based in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft, a large design research environment where researchers work across mobility, sustainability, health, and design methods. The PhD candidate will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School and will work within an interdisciplinary setting with supervisors, academic staff, and a mentor.