Oana Druta

This 3-year postdoctoral position at Eindhoven University of Technology is part of the EcoCARE – Ecologies of Care: Multispecies Design and Circular Community Economies in Peri-Urban Settings project, a cross-European consortium addressing biodiversity loss, fragmented urban planning, and climate risks. The postdoc will anchor the nature stewardship strand, focusing on citizen-driven models for maintaining biodiverse public spaces and multi-species placemaking in residential urban areas in the Netherlands, collaborating with partners in France, Spain, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden. The role is embedded in the Urbanism and Urban Architecture research group and the practice-oriented studio environment ‘Urban Labs’. Responsibilities include mapping current practices, governance arrangements, and regulatory bottlenecks related to citizen-driven nature stewardship; conducting comparative case analyses to identify enabling and limiting factors; co-designing and running deliberative activities with residents, municipal staff, and practitioners; piloting stewardship models and evaluating impacts; and producing scholarly and practice-oriented outputs such as journal publications, policy briefs, podcasts, and newsletters. The postdoc will also develop place-based studio/lab pedagogies for urban design/planning students, co-create pedagogical materials and open resources, and maintain communication with the transnational community of practice. Applicants should have a PhD in a relevant field, expertise in participatory/ethnographic or design-research methods, and experience with living labs, co-design, or action research. The position offers full-time employment for 2 years, a competitive salary (scale 10), year-end bonus, vacation pay, allowances for commuting and remote work, relocation support for international candidates, and access to high-quality training programs and campus facilities. The university provides a dynamic, interdisciplinary, and international environment, with a focus on sustainability and future-proof built environments. Applications must be submitted online by November 21, 2025, and should include a cover letter, CV, list of representative outputs, and a research plan. For further information, contact Associate Professor Oana Druta or HR Advisor Leo van Houten.

PhD opportunity at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in co-design and adoption of European digital twin infrastructure for living environments . This PhD is part of the Horizon Europe project AiGENT (AI-enabled digital twin infrastructure for health and living environments). The project examines how AI-enabled infrastructures can be designed and adopted in ways that are not only technically robust, but also socially acceptable, trustworthy, fair, and transferable across countries and domains. The research will focus on evaluating and structuring co-design processes in a large international European consortium. You will study how participatory approaches shape legitimacy, stakeholder value, fairness, bias, access, power relations, and adoption dynamics in different national contexts. The work includes designing and analysing evaluation workshops and cross-domain focus groups in three pilot countries, engaging researchers, construction industry actors, housing portfolio managers, policy actors, and residents. The position is embedded in the chair of urbanism at TU/e’s Department of Built Environment and involves close collaboration with academic and technical partners across Europe, including Cem Ataman , Liesbet Geris (VPH – The Society for In Silico Medicine), and developer teams from VITO, VTT, CERTH, and FORTH. Eligible backgrounds include urbanism, urban studies, geography, planning, information systems, or related fields. The post specifically welcomes candidates who can move between disciplinary frames and who are interested in the impact of digital technologies on housing and living environments. Experience with participatory design, stakeholder engagement, urban data systems, AI-enabled information models, and basic computational analysis tools such as Python is expected or strongly preferred. Funding and conditions: full-time PhD employment for four years, with salary according to Dutch university scale P (€3,059–€3,881 per month), plus holiday allowance, year-end bonus, and standard employment benefits. Teaching duties are included as part of the appointment. Application deadline: 12 June 2026. Apply online through the TU/e vacancy page; submit a cover letter, CV, and two references. Applications sent by email or post will not be processed.