Are you holding Master’s degree and looking for fully funded PhD positions? Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands invites online application for multiple funded PhD Programs / fully funded PhD positions in various research areas.
Candidates interested in fully funded PhD positions can check the details and may apply as soon as possible. Interested and eligible applicants may submit their online application for PhD programs via the University’s Online Application Portal.
1. Fully Funded PhD Position in spatial governance of water scarcity in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium)
Summary of PhD Program:
While water scarcity has been extensively studied, the role of spatial planning in addressing this challenge remains underexplored. This PhD project will examine how spatial planning and policy can support the necessary evolution from accelerated water drainage to increased infiltration, retention and reuse of water, which is crucial for developing long-term drought resilience. Therefore, this study seeks to assess how spatial planning frameworks in both countries can adapt to water scarcity by promoting water infiltration, retention, and reuse. Through comparative analysis, you will investigate policies, regional cooperation mechanisms, and spatial strategies in both countries.
Application Deadline: 2 June 2025
2. Fully Funded PhD Position in Agrivoltaics crop production
Summary of PhD Program:
As a PhD candidate, you will contribute to the design of efficient and practical agrivoltaic systems. To this end, you will quantify the performance of a range of plant species across a number of different agrivoltaic setups available within the project. You will determine growth, development, yield and underlying performance traits such as photosynthesis and evapotranspiration of the plants, and the heterogeneity in these traits in relation to solar panel setup and characteristics. You will also observe disease pressure and a range of soil parameters.
Application Deadline: 2 June 2025
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3. Fully Funded PhD Position in Tribological properties of dispersed and multi-component food systems
Summary of PhD Program:
The Doctoral Network “Edible Soft Matter” (acronym: ESM), funded by the European Union in the frame of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) funding programme is an international, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral network gathering leading experts in basic and applied soft matter and food sciences. The objective of this 48-month project, starting from 1st March 2025 is to train and develop the employability of a new generation of young researchers, regulators, consultants and project leaders by providing them with a unique expertise in the design, production and quality assessment of innovative plant-based food products.
Application Deadline: 31 May 2025
4. Fully Funded PhD Position in transdisciplinary, systemic design for transformative change
Summary of PhD Program:
Today’s society faces major environmental challenges, such as climate change adaptation, sustainable resource management and biodiversity decline. Small-scale, sectoral solutions will not suffice to address these challenges adequately and comprehensively. Instead, far-reaching societal change is needed. Landscape architects have an important role to play in fostering these changes. Designing long-term future perspectives and strategies towards these futures can provide insight into how to address the current challenges in an integrated and transformative manner.
Application Deadline: 26 May 2025
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5. Fully Funded PhD Position in Exploring the Impact of Green Infrastructure on Health and Biodiversity
Summary of PhD Program:
This PhD project will explore the dynamic interactions between human and non-human agents and green infrastructure within peri-urban landscapes. This first requires the development of a comprehensive ABM framework able to capture these complex interactions, and, in a second phase, the application of this model to simulate the effects of different GI designs (e.g., parks, green corridors, urban forests) on outcomes such as physical activity, mental health, and species richness. This model should allow the exploration of the synergies and trade-offs between human well-being and ecological benefits offered by different site-specific design solutions.
Application Deadline: 26 May 2025
6. Fully Funded PhD Position in Manipulating plastid and mitochondrial inheritance in plants
Summary of PhD Program:
Besides the nucleus, plastids and mitochondria also contain genetic materials (known as cytoplasmic genomes) essential for key cellular processes including photosynthesis, respiration, and metabolism. Since these organelles cannot form de novo, they must be inherited from one generation to the next. What makes this inheritance process unique? Unlike nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents, plastid and mitochondrial genomes are inherited exclusively from the mother.
Application Deadline: 19 May 2025
7. Fully Funded PhD Position in herbivorous insect-plant-microbiome interactions
Summary of PhD Program:
In this project, you will explore the role of microbes in the rhizo- and/or phyllospere in protecting plants against insects. You will study plant-soil feedback mechanisms, make microbial isolates and test inoculants for their effect on insect and plant performance. You will perform physiological and molecular studies to understand the underlying mechanisms of microbe-induced plant resistance. With this, you will unravel the role of beneficial microbes and the processes that are crucial for plants to maximize profitable functions from their microbiome when attacked by insects.
Application Deadline: 16 May 2025
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8. Fully Funded PhD Position in aphids, drought and the plant microbiome
Summary of PhD Program:
You will study rhizobacteria for their stress-protective properties against drought and aphids in brassicaceous plants with the aim to identify beneficial bacteria, the molecular mechanisms and signaling pathways underlying these interactions. You will focus on application of bacterial isolates and synthetic communities and study how they affect plant resilience and development. You will perform in-depth studies on the microbiome, transcriptome and metabolome to discover genes and processes that are crucial for plants to maximize profitable functions from their microbiome and help the plant to perform better under environmental stresses.
Application Deadline: 16 May 2025
9. Fully Funded PhD Position in Sweet or sour – how the nectar microbiome shapes the pollinator community in brassicaceous plants
Summary of PhD Program:
Pollination by insects is rewarded with floral nectar. However, as a nutrient-rich and well-protected environment, flower nectar also supports a diverse community of beneficial, commensal, and antagonistic microbes. These microorganisms influence the interaction between the plant and its pollinators, but also with nectar robbers and flower-feeding herbivores by altering the nutritional value and the chemical composition of the nectar. Despite the importance of pollination for seed production of many brassicaceous crops, little is known on the role of the nectar microbiome for plant fitness and seed set in these plants. Besides plant fitness, nectar microbes also impact pollinator health and thereby strongly influence the pollinator community beyond individual plant-pollinator interactions.
Application Deadline: 16 May 2025
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10. Fully Funded PhD Position in single-step genomic evaluations considering data spanning multiple generations adequately
Summary of PhD Program:
The Animal Breeding and Genomics group at Wageningen University is looking for a PhD to take part in the MiXBLUP project, a collaboration with LUKE (Finland). Genomic evaluations have become an integral part of modern animal breeding, widely adopted by breeding companies to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of genomic selection. This has accelerated genetic progress and has improved overall productivity and sustainability in livestock populations. In this PhD project, you will contribute to developing accurate and unbiased genomic models for large-scale within-population genomic evaluations, incorporating data from multiple generations.
Application Deadline: 12 May 2025
11. Fully Funded PhD Position in The development and institutional design of Flood Resilient Landscape Governance Arrangements
Summary of PhD Program:
We are looking for a PhD candidate as part of our project “Flexible Deltas” of the Delta Climate Center (DCC) in Vlissingen. The position is about the development and institutional design of Flood Resilient Landscape Governance Arrangements in the Southwestern Delta of the Netherlands. The Flexible Delta project focuses on Flood Resilient Landscapes (FRL) and the feasibility of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in the land-water transition zones of the Western and Eastern Scheldt.
Application Deadline: 12 May 2025
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12. Fully Funded PhD Position in Resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across landscapes
Summary of PhD Program:
There are two PhD positions available in this project; PhD A will focus on biodiversity (plants and animals) and PhD B on ecosystem functions and services (related to soils and vegetation) within the same study design. The focal taxa and functions are yet to be defined, taking the interests and skills of the successful PhD candidates into consideration. Both PhD candidates will conduct intensive fieldwork for at least two field seasons. Activities include the setup of a strong study design across various landscapes around Wageningen, data collection to quantify biodiversity and species interactions (position A), data collection to quantify ecosystem functions and services (position B), advanced statistical data analyses and modelling, and writing manuscripts.
Application Deadline: 12 May 2025
13. Fully Funded PhD Position in Plant Photobiology
Summary of PhD Program:
Light photoreceptors, including the phytochromes that detect red and far-red light, and the cryptochromes that sense blue light are master sensors and integrators of environmental signals. They play crucial roles in chloroplast development, photosynthetic metabolism and plant growth. We are interested in dissecting the molecular mechanisms that enable these photoreceptors to transmit environmental information across organelles, coordinating the nuclear and the plastid genomes for efficient photosynthesis. This includes exploring the intersection of transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulatory events.
Application Deadline: 12 May 2025
14. Fully Funded PhD Position in Plant Light Signalling
Summary of PhD Program:
Plants use light for photosynthesis and as a source of information about their environment. We are excited to study and/or engineer the molecular mechanisms of light signalling both as a resource and as an information channel. In this PhD project you will investigate tissues-level and cellular aspects of developmental plasticity in response to light cues. We focus our research especially on shade avoidance responses to light cues of high planting densities and aim to generate knowledge that is needed to improve crops in other projects.
Application Deadline: 12 May 2025
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15. Fully Funded PhD Position in Farmer Perceptions & Decision Making towards Functional AgroBiodiversity for Sustainable Pest Management
Summary of PhD Program:
Functional agrobiodiversity (FAB) to support natural control of pests of arable crops may offer an alternative to conventional pest control. Although adoption of FAB practices has the potential to lead to lower use of pesticides in farming and can contribute to improved biodiversity in and around agricultural fields, the adoption of FAB (and with those alternative agricultural practices) is critically dependent on place specific on-farm decision making.
