PhD in NWO Project CERRADO

The CERRADO Project—Conservation and Ecological Restoration for Resilient Agriculture and Development Outcomes
—examines how agricultural development and biodiversity conservation can be better balanced in Brazil’s Cerrado, particularly in the rapidly transforming MATOPIBA region. It addresses pressures arising from agribusiness expansion, deforestation, land conflicts, and increasingly severe climate impacts, while exploring how sustainable practices developed by Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and family farmers can contribute to sustainability and agrarian justice in the region.

The PhD research will contribute to the assessment of the sociobiodiversity economy in the MATOPIBA region, including small-scale farming, agroforestry, and sustainable extraction, as well as to in-depth socioeconomic and governance analyses of two cases involving local producers living in private and collective settlements in southern Maranhão. The regional assessment will examine the diversity, extent, challenges and social-economic relevance of sociobiodiversity production systems across MATOPIBA, as well as identify the key social, epistemic and political factors shaping these production systems within landscapes increasingly dominated by large-scale agriculture.

The case studies will focus on producers’ social relations and organization, knowledge systems, governance arrangements, economic conditions, political mobilization, and perceptions of agrarian transformations and climate change. They will also examine how these production systems, in turn, contribute to the maintenance of natural systems and local livelihoods.

The PhD research will be carried out in collaboration with local stakeholders and other project members and will be closely aligned with the project’s other two pillars:
ecological assessment and advocacy
. The ecological assessment includes an integrated socioecological analysis of the contributions of different production systems to biodiversity conservation, water regulation, carbon storage, pollination, pest control, local livelihoods, food security, and climate resilience. The advocacy pillar will focus on translating research findings into policy recommendations and other societal products, thereby strengthening the contribution of the research to sustainable development and agrarian justice in the region.

Developing skills for academic training and participatory research

• submission of a PhD thesis within the period of appointment;
• completion and submission of three article manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals within the period of appointment;
• presenting intermediate research results at workshops and conferences;
• participation in the ARTES Research School and Faculty of Humanities PhD training programmes;
• (co-)teaching courses at BA-level in the second and third year of the appointment (maximum 0,2 fte per year, which corresponds to approximately 8 hours per week);
• participating in meetings of the project research group and developing a shared database;
• provide support to organization and execution of project-related activities;
• co-supervise two Master research theses in your PhD research area;
• participation in national and international academic events;
• organising knowledge dissemination activities;
• participating actively in meetings of the project research team and developing a shared database and eventually co-publications.

• a completed Master's degree in Social Sciences or Environmental Sciences; preferably with focus on socioenvironmental and agrarian change;
• excellent research skills demonstrated by a Master thesis and/or published articles;
• d…