Our Marie Curie Action Initial Training Network Programme SUSPLACE (Sustainable place-shaping) will be funded by the EU-commission and kick-off October 1, 2015. SUSPLACE has a budget of €3,8 million and offers a three year position for 15 Early Stage Researchers. Ina Horlings and Dirk Roep will coordinate SUSPLACE.
The overall aim of the SUSPLACE programme is to train 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESR) in innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to study sustainable place-shaping practices. Vacancies for these 15 ESR positions will be published midst of August at this blog and the respective websites of the host universities.
The SUSPLACE approach will provide insight into how to utilize the full potential of places and communities for development and help to build capacities of people to engage in place-shaping processes and thus strengthen connectivity between policy-makers, academics, businesses and civil society. Sustainable place-shaping is seen as a way to strengthen the participation, collaboration, collective agency, self-efficacy and leadership of people, engaging in places.
SUSPLACE will raise the knowledge, skills and capacities needed to design and deliver appropriate, integrative solutions in sustainable place-based development. It will do so via its working programme along the following five themes: 1-3 INCLUSIVE, RESILIENT & CONNECTED PLACES; 4 PLACE-BASED GREENING ECONOMIES and 5 PATHWAYS TO SUSTAINABILITY. The combination of social innovation, sustainable use of resources and new economic mechanisms contributes to viable and resilient places, addressing the European Horizon 2020 goals of ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’.
The SUSPLACE programme brings together respectively six academic (host universities for ESR) and seven non-academic partners from six European countries, being:
- Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands;
- Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, United Kingdom;
- Faculty of Social Sciences, Latvia University, Latvia;
- Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, University of Aveiro, Portugal;
- Luke Economics and Society Research Unit, Luke Natural Resources Institute, Finland;
- Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium;
- Royal HaskoningDHV BV, The Netherlands;
- Foundation Except Integrated Sustainability, The Netherlands;
- Visionary Analytics, Lithuania;
- Welsh Government; Wales, United Kingdom;
- Binaural – Associação Cultural de Nodar, Portugal;
- SKEY (Suomen Kestävän Elämäntavan Yhteisöt ry) Global Eco village Network Finland, Finland;
- Kalnciema Quarter, Latvia.
SUSPLACE thus provides a challenging research and training programme for 15 Early Stage Researchers. Vacancies will be shortly published here and at the recruitment websites of the host universities.
For more information regarding SUSPLACE contact: lummina.horlings@wur.nl or dirk.roep@wur.nl.