Explore Fully Funded PhD opportunities at the Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands across a range of departments. Apply now to be considered for these prestigious positions.
1. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Transnational Retirement across the Netherlands and Turkey
Summary of PhD Project
RETIREWEL investigates retirement experiences across countries, with a focus on the connections to the welfare state, family care networks, and the retirement industry. Today’s older adults are more likely to plan for and retire across more than one country due to factors such as health, climate amenities, socio-economic status, cultural values, and proximity to family, among others. These rapidly evolving retirement trajectories create new and uneven relationships among families, institutions, and places, with far-reaching impacts.
Application Deadline: 15 August 2025
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2. Fully Funded PhD Programs in reconstructing early to middle Eocene climate variability
Summary of PhD Project
Changes in regional temperature and hydrology are among the greatest threats associated with modern global warming. Temperature is an important control on hydrology. The latter will determine water supply, food security and sanitation to human communities. The paradigm is that wet regions become wetter and dry regions become drier with global warming. However, particularly in the vulnerable subtropical and mid-latitude regions, the state-of-the-art climate models produce simulations that differ not only in the magnitude, but even in the sign of change.
Application Deadline: 30 August 2025
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3. Fully Funded PhD Programs in transition to a green steel industry
Summary of PhD Project
Despite its environmental impact, steel is crucial to modern society and its development and plays a crucial economic role in the Netherlands. Transformation is necessary for the steel sector to continue to remain a key sector of the Dutch economy. Achieving ambitious environmental and social goals necessitates the development of innovative transformative pathways across the value chain. This requires an understanding of material flows and qualities. This project will develop the tools to model in sufficient detail the steel flows and evaluate the role and contribution of changes in (production, manufacturing and recycling) technology and consumption patterns (including Circular Economy), and steel qualities/grades.
Application Deadline: 25 August 2025
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4. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Modelling of Ocean Alkalinity Dynamics
Summary of PhD Project
Ocean alkalinity plays a major role in ocean’s carbon uptake, in buffering, and in calcium carbonate production and dissolution, and it impacts and is affected by various biogeochemical processes. The processes governing ocean alkalinity act over multiple timescales (from instantaneous chemical equilibration to hundred thousand of years) and involve physical, chemical and biological processes. Alkalinity dynamics is poorly understood and represented in present-day generation of earth system models.
Application Deadline: 30 August 2025
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5. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Agent-based modelling of investments in green power and green hydrogen
Summary of PhD Project
Large volumes of green power and green hydrogen are needed to green industry and the economy as a whole. A major uncertainty concerns the economic and financial viability of renewable energy generation and electrolysis. Whereas it is clear from a technical point how the co-deployment of ever more renewables and electrolysers should proceed, it is unclear whether the current market structure in the Netherlands and Europe will be conducive to such linked large-scale investments.
Application Deadline: 15 August 2025
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6. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Community- and Nature-Based Solutions
Summary of PhD Project
This position combines quantitative and qualitative research approaches to understand how we can quantify the effectiveness of community-based nature conservation and restoration. The candidate will assess the integration of participatory monitoring approaches, remote sensing and local natural resource knowledge to improve decision making in the implementation of nature based solutions and inform benefit sharing. The candidate will work on several case studies, including a case study in Northern Kenya in collaboration with the Wyss Academy for Nature (University of Bern).
Application Deadline: 3 August 2025
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7. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Small Peptides as Regulators of Plant Salt Stress Responses
Summary of PhD Project
Salt application triggers osmotic and ionic stress pathways and causes cell wall modifications, particularly in pectins, affecting plant growth. Interestingly, salt-induced cell wall changes also activate the expression of small peptides that act as key regulators of stress responses. However, their release mechanisms and modes of action remain poorly understood. This project aims to uncover how cell wall modifications regulate peptide signalling and their signalling control salinity responses.
Application Deadline: 7 August 2025
8. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law
Summary of PhD Project
Over a period of four years, you will conduct a PhD research under the supervision of a supervisor and one or more (co-)supervisors on a topic that aligns with our research programme Adaptivity of accountability and liability law. The research programme is available on the UCALL website. It focuses on the interaction between societal developments and the norms, structuring, allocation, enforcement, and (intended) societal functioning of accountability and liability.
Application Deadline: 25 August 2025
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9. Fully Funded PhD Programs in biomimetic DNA origami mechanisms
Summary of PhD Project
Chaperones are protein complexes that assist other proteins in their folding process. Well-known examples are the bacterial GroEL/ES and the eukaryotic TRiC. Despite extensive research, there are still significant controversies regarding the exact mechanism of action. To understand the molecular and biophysical principles of protein folding, we aim to build fully controllable chaperone-like machines using DNA origami, characterising them through cutting-edge biophysical and biochemical techniques.
Application Deadline: 15 August 2025
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10. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Bioprinting of Vascularised Stem Cell-Derived Pancreatic Islets
Summary of PhD Project
Biofabrication is a relatively young field in which 3D fabrication technologies are used to generate living tissues by precisely patterning cells and biomaterials. In this project, funded by the Dutch Research Council external link (NWO), you will join the Levato research group, located within the Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht external link. In particular, you will contribute to the development of a 3D-bioprinted, rapidly vacularising, stem cell-derived endocrine pancreatic construct to counter type 1 diabetes. You will develop light-responsive microgels for printing stem cell and organoid to generate pancreatic islets of Langerhans.
Application Deadline: 1 August 2025
11. Fully Funded PhD Programs in atmospheric dynamics of seasonal transitions
Summary of PhD Project
In this PhD position, you will conduct idealised experiments with an atmospheric model (OpenIFS), using concepts from the mathematical field of periodically forced dynamical systems. You will gain insights into the time scales, strength, and interactions of different processes in the Earth system that play a role. You will investigate the observed annual cycle including interannual variations and study the influence of climate. Your time will be shared between the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). The mathematics institute CWI is involved in the project as well.
Application Deadline: 8 August 2025
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12. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Coupling the biological pump to past changes in the AMOC
Summary of PhD Project
The AMOC transports warm saline waters from the tropics to the high northern latitudes of the North Atlantic where they cool and sink. This part of the density-driven global “conveyor belt” may be losing its strength due to ongoing global warming, with potential large-scale climate repercussions. Even more so since the AMOC brings CO2 from the surface to the deep ocean during deepwater formation (physical pump), and variations in the AMOC strength will change the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2.
Application Deadline: 30 August 2025
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13. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Recognizing Multicultural Strengths of Youth via Social Networks at Work
Summary of PhD Project
In the Netherlands, adolescents with a migration background are less likely to find (adequate) internships and first-time jobs compared to their peers without a migration background. To date, research primarily tends to focus on how a multicultural background can lead to difficulties when entering the labor market, including more discrimination, less social support, and fewer relevant working experiences compared to monocultural peers. In the current project, we take a novel approach by examining the recognition of beneficial strengths that adolescents with a migration background may bring to the labor market.
Application Deadline: 17 August 2025
14. Fully Funded PhD Programs in A deep dive into youth cyberhate
Summary of PhD Project
The PhD project will take a unique, multi-method, and longitudinal approach. The basis for the PhD project will be a longitudinal cohort-study, where three groups of youth (starting ages 10, 13, and 16) will be followed for three consecutive years, with their parents surveyed in the first year as well. Moreover, there will be opportunity to collect and computationally analyse social media data (e.g., Instagram and TikTok activity) from youth, to be able to gain unique insight into what they post and consume online.
Application Deadline: 5 September 2025
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15. Fully Funded PhD Programs in field of climate dynamics
Summary of PhD Project
Global warming may drive a collapse or massive weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC, loosely the Gulfstream system). This would lead to significant climate change, most notably cooling over northwestern Europe. It is feared that AMOC collapse would affect regional agriculture and transport and possibly global food security. Recently, researchers from IMAU have for the first time modelled a full AMOC collapse in a full-fledged climate model, the Community Earth System Model (CESM).
Application Deadline: 31 August 2025
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16. Fully Funded PhD Programs in AI Driven Innovation in Higher Education
Summary of PhD Project
This PhD project explores how adaptive AI tools can enhance innovative pedagogies such as Challenge-Based Learning and complex learning environments by fostering higher-order thinking, transdisciplinary collaboration, and active student engagement. The research takes a dual approach, examining the integration of adaptive AI from both teacher and student perspectives to understand how these technologies can support faculty practices and empower students’ learning experiences. It focuses on the responsible and critical integration of AI in educational design, emphasising the development of AI-supported classroom models, faculty practices, and evaluation tools.
Application Deadline: 20 August 2025
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17. Fully Funded PhD Programs in Structural Virology and Antiviral Development
Summary of PhD Project
Noroviruses are the leading cause of non-bacterial gastroenteritis outbreaks worldwide. Despite their substantial global health impact, our molecular understanding of Norovirus replication remains incomplete. Critically, no approved direct-acting antivirals are currently available to protect high-risk populations from severe or life-threatening disease.
Application Deadline: 4 August 2025
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18. Fully Funded PhD Programs in field of ocean and ice dynamics
Summary of PhD Project
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and the polar ice sheets (Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets) play important roles in the climate system and have all been identified as large scale tipping elements, albeit on very different time scales. While for each of these tipping elements critical thresholds remain matter of active research, they also interact with each other. In fact, the AMOC and polar ice sheets form an intricate network of multiscale systems, with interactions that can be stabilizing or destabilizing, the latter opening the possibility of cascading tipping events.
Application Deadline: 30 August 2025
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19. Fully Funded PhD Programs in innovative stable isotope measurements of methane and its precursors
Summary of PhD Project
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and reducing its emissions is essential to meet Paris Agreement goals. Future emissions from ecosystems depend on their environmental response. Tracking methane cycling—balancing production vs. consumption and tracing carbon substrate sources—remains challenging. We will integrate methane clumped-isotope analysis with carbon and hydrogen isotope measurements of key organics, plus culture experiments, to uncover the biochemical pathways and environmental controls on methane formation and oxidation.
Application Deadline: 15 September 2025
