Ubbo Emmius M20 call 2025 is open!

The M20 programme of the Ubbo Emmius fund opened last Monday. 

The process was as follows: the schools could submit a number of themes according to the number of positions per school. RAS submitted 6 themes selected from the whole of the work field and themes of our schools. The 'bestedingscommissie' of the UEF decided to choose 2 themes out of our 6 proposed themes. 

These are the themes chosen by UEF: 

I: SL&R Revitalizing the Knowledge and Management of Sustainable Landscapes Together 

Landscapes are at the heart of many of today’s most pressing societal challenges —whether related to climate change, biodiversity loss, or the management of nitrogen emissions. In agricultural regions, these challenges are further compounded by issues such as nutrient depletion, soil erosion or subsidence, and changing biodiversity. To tackle these profound sustainability challenges involves working with serious value conflicts and differences in interests. Steering for sustainability at the landscape or regional level requires better fieldcrossing scientific knowledge processes as well as innovative societal interventions. 

The central question guiding this call is: How can the diverse and conflicting demands and expectations of various stakeholders regarding sustainable landscapes lead to practical and accepted solutions for all parties involved – also those negatively affected? Addressing this question requires integration of ecological, economic, and social knowledge and the communication of that knowledge. It requires open co-designing decision-making that fosters collaboration and productive negotiation among local communities, policymakers, businesses, media and other stakeholders. 

We seek proposals that apply innovative transdisciplinary, collaborative approaches to tackle sustainability challenges, integrating scientific knowledge with practical insights from stakeholders across sectors. Projects should engage with landscapes as dynamic spaces where societal and environmental processes intersect, offering transformative solutions to key challenges. These may involve topics such as climate adaptation, landscape history, regenerative farming, cultural identity, sustainable production, nutrient cycles, or the management of land and water systems. There should be an aim to deliver tangible outputs, such as spatial decision-support tools or co-developed landscape management approaches. These outputs should be relevant to landscape stakeholders and at least one key economic sector, and they should work also on the longer term beyond the PhD project’s horizon. 

Proposals: must come from one (or a combination of multiple) existing interdisciplinary research groups within Agricola. The supervision team should span at least two different faculties. A transdisciplinary approach is important. Projects should at a minimum have clear societal relevance and closely involve one or more societal stakeholders. Such involvement may include meaningful and demonstrable forms of collaboration or even cutting-edge ways of co- creation. 

II: D&G Knowledge and democratic politics in sustainable development 

The role of knowledge in the democratic management of sustainable development is more salient than ever. In complex societies, public policy-making, implementation, and evaluation increasingly depend on experts to facilitate effective problem-solving. However, policies driven by expertise are often criticized for fostering technocratic excesses that unduly depoliticize issues and distance decision-making from citizens’ control. This concern is particularly pronounced in the area of sustainable development, which entails three interconnected challenges: 

1) The dependence on rapidly evolving fields of knowledge, in which the establishment of scientific consensus is more precarious, and therefore exposed to greater political contestation. 

2) The tension between the long-term thinking implied in and needed by sustainability science, and the short-term horizons of electoral politics. 

3) The crucial role of international cooperation in the pursuit of sustainability goals, but the absence of adequate institutional structures for transnational democratic oversight. 

Technological advancements, such as the rise of social media and artificial intelligence, further intensify the tensions between expertise and democracy, by democratizing access to knowledge while simultaneously blurring the lines between accurate and misleading information. 

Proposals under this theme must engage with SDG 16 “Peace, justice, and strong institutions”, in combination with one or more of the remaining SDGs. More precisely, projects should investigate, via a comparative approach, different ways of reconciling the competing demands of democratic legitimacy and expertise-based decision-making in one or more areas of sustainable development, with a view to making conclusions on alternative institutional solutions to these dilemmas, and on their consequences for the viability of democratic institutions at different levels. 

Proposals: Must come from one (or a combination of multiple) existing interdisciplinary research groups within Agricola. The supervision team should span at least two different faculties. A transdisciplinary approach is important. Projects should at a minimum have clear societal relevance and closely involve one or more societal stakeholders. Such involvement may include meaningful and demonstrable forms of collaboration or even cutting-edge ways of co- creation. 

More information on the 2025 call for proposals for the M20 PhD program, the application procedure, and the topics from the other Schools can be found on the UEF website.