Thesis Research: Resilience in 11 cities in Europe - an assessment
This research will be part of our Resilient City Hub - please read more about the resilient city hub here.
Research topic: What is the (policy) learning of local experiments for urban resilience in 11 cities in Europe? Method: Applying an evaluation framework to assess the local experiments.
Keywords: cities, accessibility, urban resilience, ecosystems, mobility, energy, social cohesion, Europe
Period: November 2017 - April 2017
Deadline application: 14 July 2017 - please scroll down for more info.
The case
Cities experiment for sustainability. Experimenting is a way to not only test and trial new technologies and new means for achieving sustainability agendas but also a way to explore new forms of collaborations between local governments and citizens, businesses and experts for co-producing new knowledge and forging resources. The real-life question to be tackled in this master thesis is what is the (policy) learning of local experiments for urban resilience in 11 cities in Europe applying an evaluation framework to assess them. The outcome will be not only an impact assessment of experiments for urban resilience but also an insight view on the nature and design characteristics of these real-life experiments.
Background
In RESILIENT EUROPE project we work with 11 cities in Europe for experimenting for urban resilience. Urban resilience has been co-defined by research and policy makers in these cities as the capacity of cities, people, and systems to recover in an aftermath of a shock or a crisis and restore the ability to reogranise, empower people to actively collaborate and navigate complex reality, and build adaptive and robust infrastructures that improve place and ecosystems. The 11 cities have been realised local experiments in deprived neighbourhoods to explore not only possible collaborations between local government and citizens but also to learn how persistent are barriers and hurdles at social, economic and institutional dimensions for achieving local urban resilience. The 11 cities include: Rotterdam, Bristol, Burgas, Glasgow, Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Katowice, Antwerp, Malmo, Vejle, Potenza.
Application requirements
Requirements: If you are a master student with English proficiency interested in the topic, please write an e-mail to Fenna Plaisier: hubs@centre-for-sustainability.nl
Please include the following details: Name, Master, University and a short motivation.
After the deadline, we will get back at you before 28 July. After this, you will be connected with DRIFT and they will in the end choose the most suitable students.
IMPORTANT: The details of your research and the requirements will be defined with your supervisor and DRIFT.
For more information please call or send an email to Fenna Plaisier:
f.c.plaisier@cml.leidenuniv.nl
+31628652837
About DRIFT
DRIFT is a leading research institute in the field of sustainability transitions. They develop and share transformative knowledge to support people, cities, sectors and organisations to engage proactively with transitions.
DRIFT has four main activities that complement, ground and inspire each other: academic research, consultancy, education and public dialogue & debate.
The strong link between all of their activities allows them to combine theory-development with critical feedback and various ways of testing and validating our insights. It also enables them to keep their research relevant to a wide variety of actors.
Together with the many people and institutes they collaborate with, they aim to accelerate transitions towards more just, sustainable and resilient societies.