Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Earth Sciences

Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences studies the Earth: from the Earth’s core to its surface, including man’s spatial and material utilisation of the Earth – always with a focus on sustainability and innovation. With a population of 3,400 students (BSc and MSc) and 720 staff, the Faculty is a strong and challenging organisation. The Faculty is organised in four Departments: Earth Sciences, Physical Geography, Sustainable Development, and Human Geography & Spatial Planning.

The Department of Earth Sciences conducts teaching and research across the full range of the solid Earth and environmental Earth sciences, with activities in almost all areas of geology, geochemistry, geophysics, biogeology and hydrogeology. Our key research themes are Earth & Planetary Processes, Sustainable Use of the Subsurface, Planetary Health & Environment, and Climate & Life.The department hosts a highly international tenured staff of over 50 scientists and more than 110 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. We house or have access to a wide variety of world-class laboratories, among which are UU’s Electron Microscopy Centre, the Geolab, and the Earth Simulation Lab. We also have excellent High- Performance Computing facilities.

About Utrecht
Utrecht is the fourth largest city in the Netherlands with a population of nearly 360,000 and forms a hub in the middle of the country. Its historical city centre and its modern central station can easily be reached from our campus in Utrecht Science Park by public transport or by a 15-minute bicycle ride. Utrecht boasts beautiful canals with extraordinary wharf cellars housing cafés and terraces by the water, as well as a broad variety of shops and boutiques.

Homepage: https://www.uu.nl/geo/aw

The Department of Earth Sciences is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate with an MSc background in Earth, Environmental or another relevant field. You will work on the project Reconstructing early to middle Eocene climate variability.

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. Moreover, some hydrological reconstructions from past warm climates suggest that dry regions may have been wetter and there are plausible physical explanations for these observations. Moreover, these past warm time intervals have wet mid-to high latitude belts that extend to much higher latitudes than most climate models suggest. Important questions also remain regarding the seasonality of that precipitation.

Past warm climates such as the Eocene provide natural experiments to test model performance in projecting non-analogue future global and regional hydrology and dependence on global and regional temperature. However, so far, such model-data comparisons chronically suffer from a lack of field data describing regional and seasonal hydrological regimes under past warm climates. Time series of hydrological change on orbital time scales, which includes long-term variability in the geographical range of monsoons – a crucial component of hydrology in the subtropics – and extreme events are notoriously missing. Particularly for very warm climates such those of the Eocene, we urgently need such records to unlock the promise of paleoclimate as a useful analogue of future hydrology.

To address this important issue, this project aims to generate orbital-scale resolution (~4 kyr) temperature, oceanographic and hydrological reconstructions for specific time intervals across the early and middle Eocene (~51 – 47 Ma). This time interval covers the transition from the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum to the presumably somewhat cooler early Middle Eocene. One aspect of the research is to assess the timing and global nature of this cooling. Subsequently, we look to constrain:
1. hydrology and its potential monsoon and extreme event forcing during the early and middle Eocene at both subtropical and higher latitudes;
2. the dependency of hydrological regime on regional and global average temperature change in warm climates;
3. the dependency of hydrological regime on the meridional temperature gradient that determines atmospheric water transport to extra-tropical regions.

To this end, you will generate proxy data to assess temperature, hydrology and carbon cycle information. Methods might include palynology and organic biomarker and biogenic calcite geochemistry at several sediment sequences. You will collaborate with fellow PhD candidates or postdocs carrying out climate model experiments that complement your work.

This project is part of the 10-year EMBRACER research programme funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). At EMBRACER, we work at the very frontiers of knowledge on climate change, Earth’s climate system and climate feedbacks. The programme brings together a wide range of world-leading climate experts with the aim to address existing uncertainties about climate feedbacks at the boundaries between oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. Our interdisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art infrastructure will bring us forward in our understanding of the impact of climate feedbacks emerging over the next decades to centuries. The project leader and daily supervisor will be Prof. Appy Sluijs, and close collaboration in this project will be with Dr Peter Bijl.

A personalised training programme will be set up, reflecting your training needs and career objectives. About 20% of your time will be dedicated to this training component, which includes following workshops and/or courses, as well as training on the job in assisting in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes of the department at Utrecht University.

Qualifications
You are a motivated team player with a strong interest in paleoclimate and have completed your MSc degree in Earth Sciences, or another relevant field. Furthermore, you have:

• a true passion for research;
• experience in generating proxy records with affinity for micropaleontology and geochemistry;
• experience with working in a (wet chemistry) laboratory;
• statistical skills for proper data treatment ;
• experience with programming (R or Python) for data handling and visualisation;
• strong analytical skills;
• excellent communication skills;
• motivation to cooperate in a diverse and multidisciplinary research team;
• a basic theoretical background of climate, notably greenhouse forcing and hydrology.

Due to the international character of our research, proficiency in spoken and written English is essential. We highly encourage applicants from all members of our community and of diverse backgrounds to join us.

Terms of employment
You will be offered a full-time PhD position, initially for one year with extension to four years in total upon a successful assessment in the first year, and with the specific intent that it results in a doctorate within this period. The gross monthly salary starts with € 2,901 in the first year and increases to € 3,707 in the fourth year of employment with a full-time appointment. Salaries are supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8,3% per year. A pension scheme, partially paid parental leave, and flexible employment conditions are based on the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.

In addition to the collective employment conditions, Utrecht University has a number of schemes and facilities of its own for employees. These include agreements on professional development, leave arrangements, sports and cultural schemes, and you get discounts on software and other IT products. We also give you the opportunity to expand your terms of employment through the Employment Conditions Selection Model. This is how we encourage you to grow. For more information, please visit Working at Utrecht University.

For informal questions (not for application), contact Prof. Dr Appy Sluijs at a.sluijs@uu.nl.

To apply, please follow the link tot the corresponding advertisement on our own website and follow the guidelines mentioned there. The application deadline is August 30th, 2025. The preferred starting date is late 2025 or early 2026.

Note that international candidates that need a visa/work permit for the Netherlands require at least four months processing time after selection and acceptance. This will be arranged with help of the International Service Desk of our university. Finding appropriate housing in or near Utrecht is your own responsibility and, unfortunately, we must warn that it is a tight market at the moment. In case of general questions about working and living in The Netherlands, please consult the Dutch Mobility Portal.

Online screening may be part of the selection. Commercial response to this ad is not appreciated.