Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership – 2nd cohort

02 Sep, 2019 - 20 May, 2021

 
The call for applications for the second cohort of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership is now open!  This year’s call focuses on developing perspectives of scale and scaling in the context of addressing complex sustainability challenges, within and through research and sustainability initiatives.
 
The Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership is a joint project of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the four academic centers Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Stockholm Resilience Centre and DRIFT, Rotterdam. It offers a unique program that trains the next generation of leaders in sustainability research affiliated with a European research institution.
 
With this year’s focus topic Scaling Sustainability, the program provides an intensive high-end training with four seminars in two years. The seminars broaden the research competencies of postdocs and promote their qualifications towards transdisciplinary leadership. The program also offers seed funding (e.g. for stakeholder meetings or proposal writing activities) to groups of participants planning to initiate research collaborations. Furthermore, an active network of current and former participants of the program will be established.
 
For who?
The program is aimed at postdocs from across Europe who want to make an impact on the transformation towards a sustainable society and advance the complementarity of natural science, social sciences and the humanities by means of their research. They should consider themselves intrapreneurs, who act responsibly and initiate positive changes and innovation within their institutions and strive for an academic leadership position in the future. In addition to excellent English language skills and experience with inter- and transdisciplinary collaborative research, their research topic must align with this year’s focus perspective on “Scaling Sustainability”.
We invite applications of postdoctoral scholars, who already conduct research on sustainability issues in the broadest sense; who work on inter- and transdisciplinary research or see why this would be useful to address sustainability issues; and who encounter problems of and with scale and scaling within their research. Examples could be earth system or large-scale social-ecological modelers trying to downscale their research; social scientists trying to upscale from case study work; political ecologists investigating global flows believing scales to be constructs; multi-level analysts trying to integrate data from very different (scalar) contexts; transition scholars interested in processes of diffusion and institutionalization and the political struggles and dilemma’s that accompany these processes.
 
For a short impression take a look at this video-story.
 
What can you expect?
Each year the PostDoc academy recruits a select number of participants to take part in a 2 year ‘course run’ with an overarching theme. A course run consists of four seminars (three full days each) over a period of two years. Each seminar will take place at one of the four academic centres and focus on their respective expertise. The seminars build on each other and are complementary. They are linked by four thematic modules that create an overarching framework:
 

 
Timing & location
A course run consists of four seminars (three full days each) over a period of two years. Each seminar will take place at one of the four academic centres and focus on their respective expertise. Details for the first course run are:
 

• 1st seminar from 25th to 27th September 2019 at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin/ Germany
• 2nd seminar from 12th to 14th February 2020 at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg/ Germany
• 3rd seminar from 14th to 16th October 2020 at the Stockholm Resilience Centre/ Sweden
• 4th seminar from 17th to 19th March 2021 at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) in Rotterdam/ The Netherlands

Application
You can apply to the second course run of the Academy via the online application form on the website of the Robert Bosch Stiftung until the 15th of March 2019.
 
In order to view the application form and apply you will need to register on the online platform. Once registered you can work on your application. Please safe regularly. You can return to your application and continue to work on it any time until 15th April 2018. If your application is considered successful in the first stage, you will be invited to an assessment workshop.
 
For more information please visit the website of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.