Apply for a Doctoral Researcher position at the Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School

Published

25.4.2024

The interdisciplinary Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School produces knowledge and understanding about global, social, cultural, organizational and individual-level change processes for the aims to create a sustainable and just society that supports planetary well-being. Complex social-ecological challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and global social inequality require in-depth investigations on dynamics and potentialities of sustainability transformations, across all sectors, scales and actors.

Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School equips doctoral researchers with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary competencies and transferable skills that can be used in many different jobs, career paths and sectors, enabling them to effectively and professionally contribute to and provide leadership in the evolving arenas of sustainability transformations. Interdisciplinarity integrates knowledge and methods from different disciplines to advance solutions which are beyond the scope of any single discipline. A transdisciplinary approach reaches also beyond the academy by considering non-academic stakeholder knowledge in the pursuit of a broadening understanding of sustainability transformations pathways and processes. The selected doctoral researchers are encouraged to link with industries as well as governmental and non-governmental organizations from the beginning of their projects.

The Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School is led by the University of Eastern Finland, brings together 10 universities and has funding for 40 PhD students. At the Ģ��ֱ�� there are open 6 positions for PhD students, and the Doctoral School is coordinated by JYU.Wisdom.

Diverse research on sustainability

We are looking for highly competent and motivated doctoral researchers, who are prepared to complete their PhD dissertation in three years. They should have background and interest in sustainable transitions from the above-mentioned perspectives and be prepared to participate in multidisciplinary research environment. The doctoral candidates will be located in different faculties and departments based on their background and topic of the dissertation and will enjoy multidisciplinary supervision within JYU and in collaboration with other universities.

Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School will comprehensively bring together perspectives related to

education for sustainability, planetary wisdom and future competencies,
sustainable business and working life,
leadership and management in societal change,
cultural transformation and social imagination,
policies, legal systems and means of regulation,
planetary health and well-being, and
civil society and democratic development.

The Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School reaches far into the future

Although the Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School is part of the three-year piloting of new practices in doctoral education, achieving sustainability transformations require long-term work. Indeed, the goal of the Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School during the pilot period is to establish a long-term, multidisciplinary Doctoral School in Finland, which will serve society's needs for sustainability experts for a long time. From the beginning, the research school's practices are designed to be sustainable over time, and participation in the research school will be made possible for sustainability-oriented PhD students and their supervisors even if they are outside the pilot funding. The Sustainability Transformations Doctoral School's activities start at the beginning of 2025.