Postdoc

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Job offer
- JOB - Netherlands - University of Groningen via AcademicTransfer - Posted on: 22 August 2026
Page contents
22 Aug 2026
University of Groningen Research Field
Political sciences » Public policy
Sociology » Societal behaviour
Sociology » Urban sociology Researcher Profile
Recognised Researcher (R2) Application Deadline
3 Sep 2026 - 22:00 (UTC) Country
Netherlands Type of Contract
Temporary Job Status
Not Applicable Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?
Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?
No
Offer Description
Dutch national policy and legislation has high expectations of "bottom-up" provisioning systems for essential services, such as care and energy, where citizens take active roles in the set-up and functioning of an initiative. This requires local civil servants to engage citizens in policy design, implementation, and governance on a broad range of topics as established by, for example, the Climate Agreement, the Environment and Planning Act, and the Act to strengthen participation at the local level. While there is no shortage of public participation approaches policy makers can use to structure their citizen engagement interventions, systematic knowledge of which approach works best, when, where, and for whom is lacking. Hence, in their efforts to engage citizens, local civil servants run the risk of flying blind, lacking insight into which, if any, are the most adequate tools in their local context - for the specific community, specific problem at hand, at the given level of policymaking, and in the given social, economic, historical, and cultural conditions. The research you conduct in this postdoc project will help ameliorate this situation.
What are you going to do?
In this project, you will help remedy the situation described in the introduction by developing theory and conduc...