Postdoc: Micro–Macro Modelling of Circular Society Transitions

Help to accelerate the transition to a circular Netherlands by co-creating and designing an agent-based model of the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (MRA).

The world is facing many ecological and political challenges, many of them rooted in the linear, extractive systems of resource use in present-day society. As a result, these challenges throw up many questions about the future of society and cities. One widely agreed-upon necessity is the transition to a circular society, a society that is not extractive but that systematically reuses its resources.

In this Post Doc, you will contribute to visions of a circular future, particularly in an urban context.

Our multi-disciplinary NWA project “Accelerating the Circular Transition” (ACT!) develops a systemic approach to accelerate the fair transition to a circular society in The Netherlands (and beyond). It will co-create an integrated approach to manage this complex transition, building a toolbox of shared visions of and for a circular society with societal well‑being at its centre. For this, the consortium consists of a large variety of scientific researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as stakeholders from all parts of Dutch society, including (national, regional and local) government, industry, and local NGOs.

Transitioning to a circular society poses trade‑offs: creating new jobs while potentially eliminating others, enhancing wellbeing but reducing demand. Products as a service (PaaS) may boost resource efficiency but concentrate value in platforms. This demands comprehensive modelling. Global CGE models based on an IO core with environmental and social extensions.

Your main contribution will be in the co‑developing of a toolset (aim of WP2 of the project) to simulate a circular society and the transition to it, in particular focussing on the spatial distributions of the impact of the transition. These tools will be used to evaluate pathways (as developed in WP3 and WP4 of the project) and monitor the transition and its impacts on key wellbeing and environmental impact indicators in the Netherlands in general and the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region more specifically.

Together with researchers from Wageningen University, Leiden University and Tilburg University, you will work on integrating their findings from the (static) circular LCAs, stock‑flow MFA information and the environmental‑economic metabolism in specific geographical areas such as Amsterdam with information on shifts in value‑capturing potential when shifting to circular systems. This will provide novel insights into feedbacks, demand and supply balances and incentives for consumers and firms.

• Develop novel simulation model (extensions) for circularity transitions
• Investigate the systemic effects (across space) of different demand and supply decisions in the context of circular economy/society
• Collaborate in an interdisciplinary team and explore different methodological approaches
• Publish in peer‑reviewed journals and present findings at international conferences
• Interact with micro‑modellers in collecting primary and secondary data to connect their Agent‑based model to the macro models.

The research is embedded within the chair Urban Economics, which is led by Prof. Eveline van Leeuwen. You will be co‑supervised by Francesca Rubiconto (UEC). Furthermore, you will be connected to the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), which is an important entry point for data and models in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam.