Copernicus Institute

of Sustainable Development

Telephone +31(0)30 253 5180

E-mail j.kirchherr@uu.nl
Website www.uu.nl/copernicus

Dr. J. W. Kirchherr
Assistant Professor

Heidelberglaan 2
Room 1016
3584 CS UTRECHT
The Netherlands

07.08.2017

Dear all,

We are currently seeking to fill to 2 PhD positions on the circular economy. The specific sub-theme to
be explored is circular business models – both implemented by incumbents (e. g. H&M, Heineken) and
start-ups (e. g. Looptworks, LanzaTech). Circular co-working spaces/incubators and accelerators (e. g.
BlueCity, Circular Valley) are also of interest.

Institutional set-up of the PhD:

 Throughout your PhD, you will be part of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development
(CISD) at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. CISD is one of the leading research centers
worldwide on sustainable development even outpacing the University of Oxford and Harvard
University in the most recent ranking by Times Higher Education
 Within CISD, you will be integrated in Europe’s most vibrant cross-university research group on
the circular economy with more than 10 PhD students currently enrolling (with Utrecht
University’s partner universities being institutions such as Universidade Aberta (Portgual),
Universitata Degli Studi Di Messina (Italy), Universität Graz (Austria))
 We encourage you to visit these partner universities throughout your PhD and are also keen to
facilitate visiting scholarships for you in other relevant and leading European universities such
as the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics (LSE)

Duration, supervision and financing of the PhD:

 The circular economy is an extremely applied and fast-growing field of study and thus research
in this field is also fast-paced. We expect prospective PhDs students to undertake their research
(only paper-based) in 2 to (a maximum of) 3 years
 Julian Kirchherr, a former McKinsey consultant, would act as your PhD supervisor, Marko
Hekkert, one of the world’s most cited scholars on innovation studies and head of CISD, would

1
 act as your promoter; our PhD-approach is team-based with intense supervision offered by the
supervisor if desired (e. g. weekly update and problem-solving calls)
 We offer external and internal PhD positions (internal: 25% positions and 50% positions; 25%
position = 2.5 months/year in Utrecht for 1-2 days/week); tasks related to the internal position
relate to teaching and supervision of Bachelor students

Your profile:
 You hold a Master’s degree in the social sciences, preferably business administration,
economics, political science or sociology (we are also open to discussing the suitability of other
backgrounds)
 You have experience and/or great interest in sustainable development and innovation studies

If you are interested in this opportunity, please reach out to Julian Kirchherr (j.kirchherr@uu.nl) for
details. We are keen to fill these vacancies as soon as possible, but no later than October 2017.