PhD Position: Shaping a Just and Inclusive Urban Mobility Transition

This PhD project will contribute to understanding and shaping a just and inclusive shift to sustainable urban mobility amid spatial and social inequalities.

Job description

Mobility lies at the heart of urban life, shaping how people access work, education, services, and social life. Yet urban mobility faces growing pressures. Climate change, spatial constraints, and environmental degradation challenge existing systems, making a sustainable urban mobility transition essential for maintaining liveable, accessible, and resilient cities. Strategies supporting this transition include promoting active, shared, and collective forms of mobility, as well as reducing the need to travel through improved digital accessibility.

However, sustainable mobility is not only a technological challenge, but also a spatial and social one. Access to services, facilities, and transport options is unevenly distributed across places and population groups, influencing travel opportunities and choices. Mobility planning is therefore closely intertwined with broader spatial planning and housing policies. Social circumstances further shape people’s ability to adopt sustainable and active travel modes, highlighting the need for inclusive approaches to sustainable mobility change. This raises a central question: how can we shape a just sustainable mobility transition in which benefits and burdens are distributed fairly across places and social groups?

While research on spatial accessibility and mobility justice is expanding, much of it remains retrospective, evaluative, or conceptual. Less attention has been paid to how principles of justice and equity can actively guide future mobility transitions and planning interventions. At the same time, municipalities, planners, and city networks are already pursuing transformative mobility initiatives, often without sufficient evidence-based insights and tools to support implementation.

This PhD project aims to address this gap by exploring how concepts of spatial accessibility and mobility justice can be interpreted and operationalised in ways that support sustainable mobility transitions. The project should contribute both to academic debates and to practical strategies for planners, designers, and policymakers.

The PhD candidate will have substantial freedom to define a specific problem statement and research questions within this broader theme.

Potential research directions include:

• Inclusive active and shared mobility solutions tailored to different spatial and social contexts.
• Stakeholder and citizen perspectives on justice and fairness in mobility transitions.
• Interactions between sustainable mobility, spatial planning, and housing policy.
• Equity implications of accessibility-oriented planning approaches, such as the 15-minute city.
• Relationships between mobility opportunities, digital accessibility, and transport disadvantage.

These examples are intended as inspiration rather than strict requirements, and candidates are encouraged to develop their own focus and approach.

The project is expected to adopt a mixed-methods and participatory case-study approach, including fieldwork and engagement with stakeholders and communities in one or more locations in the Netherlands. The focus may be on urban, suburban, or metropolitan contexts, including the relationships between cities and surrounding peri-urban areas. Because the research involves participatory engagement in a Dutch context, proficiency in both Dutch and English is required.

We seek a motivated and critically engaged candidate who is eager to contribute to academically rigorous and societally relevant research on inclusive and sustainable mobility futures.

Job requirements

• A Master’s degree in spatial planning, urban planning, urban studies, transport studies, human geography, or a related discipline.
• Strong interest in contributing to a sustainable mobility transition from a social and spatial justice perspective.
• Experience with or interest in mixed-methods research, participatory research, community engagement, and/or stakeholder engagement.
• Ability to work independently, proactively, and creatively.
• Very good presentation, writing, and communication skills.
• An excellent command of written and spoken English. Candidates must meet the English-language requirements for admission to the TU Delft PhD programme. Before the start of the PhD trajectory, applicants are required to provide a valid TOEFL iBT or IELTS score where applicable.
• Proficiency in spoken and written Dutch sufficient for conducting participatory research in the Dutch context (CEFR B2 level or higher).
• Availability to start during 2026.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, its engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

Faculty Architecture & the Built Environment

The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment has a leading role in education and research worldwide. Staff and students work to improve the built environment with the help of a broad set of disciplines, including architectural design, urban planning, building technology, social sciences, process management, and geo-information science. The faculty works closely with other faculties, universities, private parties, and the public sector, and has an extensive network in the Netherlands as well as internationally.

Conditions of employment

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1.5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months, followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2.5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met.

As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills.

The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged.

Additional information

The successful candidate will join the Urban Studies section at the Department of Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. Our interdisciplinary team studies the interactions between people and their social and built environments, and the effects of urban design on behaviour.