Vacancy

The Ethics/Philosophy of Technology Section of Delft University of Technology offers two positions for PhD candidates as part of the research project ‘Responsibility arrangements in resilience policy for climate adaptation’: https://www.academictransfer.com/en/284428/phd-candidates-responsibility-arrangements-in-resilience-policy-for-climate-adaptation/.

The project is supported by an NWO Vidi Grant and will be conducted by Professor Neelke Doorn (PI) and 2 PhD candidates. For more information about the two positions, please contact Prof.dr.mr.ir. Neelke Doorn via email: n.doorn@tudelft.nl.

Job description

Climate change increases the risk of extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall and droughts. Under the header of resilience, citizens are increasingly expected to take responsibility and to transform their own community into a climateresilient living environment. However, this gives rise to pressing ethical questions that have not yet been addressed in the academic literature. The aim of the project is to investigate under what conditions these new responsibility arrangements can be justified, as arrangements may differ in their ethical acceptability as well as their effectiveness.

PhD-project 1: Responsibility arrangements and social justice: Resilience policy is often said to involve new responsibility arrangements between central government, local actors, and citizens, but it is not clear how responsibility should be conceptualized and what different types of responsibilities we should distinguish in order to fully capture all the relevant tasks and roles in these new arrangements. The aim of this PhD-project is twofold. The first aim is to develop a taxonomy of different types of responsibility in resilience policy. The second aim is to investigate the ethical justifiability of different responsibility arrangements in terms of social justice.

PhD-project 2: Agent-based modelling of responsibility arrangements: This PhD-project will create an agent-based model to simulate different responsibility arrangements. It will investigate what the different resilience arrangements expect from citizens and what citizens need to act accordingly, e.g. in terms of resources and information, but also in terms of community characteristics, such as cohesion, familiarity with other community members. The main aim of this project is to study the effectiveness of empirically traced responsibility arrangements under different conditions. Additionally, this project will identify patterns of responsibility arrangements that score high on both social justice and effectiveness.

Both projects involve empirical as well as philosophical investigations into the phenomena of resilience and responsibility.

Requirements

For the first PhD-position, we are looking for someone with a background in applied ethics/political philosophy, preferably complemented with a relevant empirical background, for example urban planning or geography.

For the second PhD-position, we are looking for someone with strong conceptual skills, for example through a background in philosophy or artificial intelligence, and experience in agent-based modelling or a willingness to acquire agent-based modelling skills.

The candidates will carry out doctoral research which will lead to a dissertation, and will also produce relevant publications. The candidates will participate in the Graduate School of TU Delft and in PhD program of the 4TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology. When applying please indicate in which position(s) you are interested; if you have the required background, you can apply for both positions. The candidates will also be involved in the teaching activities of the department.

Information and application

To apply, please send a motivation letter, a CV, a two-page proposal describing how you would undertake the research project, and a writing example (for example, your master thesis or an excerpt thereof). Since the two PhD-projects have mutual dependencies, we encourage you to include some ideas on how you plan to collaborate with the other PhD-candidate. Application interviews will probably be held in the weeks of 30 September – 4 October and 7 – 11 October 2019 (tentative dates: 1, 4 and 8 October 2019), and possibly a second round some weeks later. Applications should be sent by 17 September 2019 to vacature-tbm@tudelft.nl. Intended starting date is 1 January 2020. When applying for these positions, please refer to vacancy number ATTBM 19.015. Clearly indicate for which of the two positions apply. If you apply for both positions, we also would like to receive two separate proposals on how you would like to undertake the respective projects.

Prof.dr.mr.ir. Neelke Doorn

TU Delft

Professor Ethics of Water Engineering

Director of Education Faculty Technology, Policy and Management

Delft University of Technology

Faculty Technology, Policy and Management

Department of Values, Technology and Innovation