PhD position on Serious Game Design to Support the Development of Coastal Sand Nourishment Strategies to Increase Climate Resilience
Are you passionate about interaction design and (serious) games? Are you interested in designing and using serious games to bring diverse stakeholders together and to bridge science to society? Join us as a PhD researcher!
This research focuses on the design and use of serious/simulation games to support diverse stakeholder in exploring ways to improve climate resilience. We are seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to develop a serious/simulation game on sand nourishment strategies in support of maintaining and shaping resilient, multifunctional coastal landscapes, particularly in the context of sea level rise. This PhD position will be embedded in the Human Centred Design (HCD) chair, within the Faculty of Engineering Technology (ET).
This research position is part of the NWO-funded **SOURCE** program: Sand nOURisment strategies for sustainable Coastal Ecosystems. The SOURCE philosophy is that carefully planned sand nourishments in the present will create the required and desired resilient and dynamic multifunctional coastal landscapes of the future. SOURCE will deliver the scientific knowledge, models and design tools to develop and evaluate nourishment strategies in a multi-stakeholder co-creation process. You will join a team of 12 PhD, Post-Doc and other researchers at 8 academic institutes in total. You will collaborate closely with 25 partners from government organizations, research institutes, nature organizations and industry.
Within the SOURCE program, your project aims to design, use and evaluate a serious/simulation game that enables stakeholders, as players, to collaboratively explore sand nourishment strategies from an integrated perspective of flood safety, socio-economic benefits and natural values. You will first engage with partners to elicit specific needs that the game should meet. From there, you will iteratively design and test the game, its mechanisms and interactions. Within designing and testing the game, a few key things you will work on include: (1) establishing a sense of safety to collaboratively explore and experiment with sand nourishment strategies; (2) including current and possible future (climatic) conditions; and (3) incorporating indicators of coastal ecosystem services, visualizations and other feedback mechanisms of in-game actions in collaboration with partners and other SOURCE researchers.
Within this project, you will focus on two distinct areas for scientific contributions. Firstly, from an interaction design perspective, you will focus on the beneficial combination of tangible components and digital information in games. The HCD chair has a lab environment around a tangible interaction-based game table, which uses a physical game board that is automatically translated into digital information and which is available to you as part of this project. Secondly, from a gaming perspective, you will advance our knowledge on using games in multi-stakeholder decision-making by researching to what extent the game enables stakeholders to co-develop and assess sand nourishment strategies and facilitates social learning.
Being part of the SOURCE team implies close interaction with your UT supervisors as well as fellow researchers within the consortium. Regular consortium meetings will accommodate knowledge exchange with our partners, increasing the relevance and impact of our research. Furthermore, you will present your work at (inter)national conferences and publish your findings in journal papers and a PhD thesis.
Information and application
Are you interested in this position? Please send your application via the 'Apply now' button below before June 16, 2025, and include:
- A cover letter (maximum 2 pages A4), emphasizing your specific interest, qualifications, motivations to apply for this position.
- A Curriculum Vitae, including a list of all courses attended and grades obtained, and, if applicable, a list of publications and references.
The first round of online interviews is scheduled on June 26, 2025. The second round of interviews, preferably in person at the campus of the University of Twente, is scheduled for July 9, 2025.
We aim for this project to start September 1, 2025. We also welcome students to apply who expect to have finished their MSc thesis around this time.
For more information regarding this position, you are encouraged to contact dr.ir. Robert-Jan den Haan (r.j.denhaan@utwente.nl) or prof.dr.ir. Mascha van der Voort.
About the organisation
The Faculty of Engineering Technology (ET) engages in education and research of Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering. We enable society and industry to innovate and create value using efficient, solid and sustainable technology. We are part of a ‘people-first' university of technology, taking our place as an internationally leading center for smart production, processes and devices in five domains: Health Technology, Maintenance, Smart Regions, Smart Industry and Sustainable Resources. Our faculty is home to about 2,900 Bachelor's and Master's students, 550 employees and 150 PhD candidates. Our educational and research programmes are closely connected with UT research institutes Mesa+ Institute, TechMed Center and Digital Society Institute.
Want to know more
