Applicants are invited for a PhD fellowship/scholarship at Graduate School of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the Agroecology programme. The position is available from 01 July 2025 or later. You can submit your application via the link under 'how to apply'.

Title:
Potentials and limitations for agricultural biomass production

Research area and project description:
There will be an increasing need for biobased carbon sources for energy and material purposes, when we phase out the use of fossil hydrocarbons. In Denmark, agriculture is the largest land tenant and already supplies significant amounts of biomass for biorefining, biogas, and for direct combustion. In the future, an increasing use for materials can also be expected, e.g. in the building sector, for plastics, and for textiles.

The PhD project is expected to experimentally investigate possibilities for increasing the productivity of cover crops. Cover crops are today grown on approx. 600.000 ha in Denmark each year with the sole purpose of obtaining the ecosystem services they provide. There could be a possibility to keep or increase the environmental benefits, while creating an additional utilization of the cover crop biomass for the above-mentioned purposes.

The PhD project will also include modelling of Danish national agricultural biomass supply under different scenarios, where the achieved input from cover crops is one element. However, a number of other adjustments of the agricultural system should be included for scenario building as well.

The PhD project will be connected with the projects ACCEL (Accelerating sustainable agrobiomass for biogas), CARMA (Cross Mission Carbon Management), and CSR (Climate Smart Research).

• Project description. For technical reasons, you must upload a project description. Please simply copy the project description above and upload it as a PDF in the application.
   

Qualifications and specific competences:
We are looking for a candidate with the following qualifications:

• A Master’s degree in agronomy, biology, or similar
• Knowledge of or interest in scenario building of agricultural futures
• Knowledge of and interest in working with the biological carbon cycle
• Knowledge of carbon and nutrient flows in agriculture

In addition, one or more of the following qualifications will count positive:

• Proven record in scientific writing
• Experience with experimental field trials
• Knowledge of handling and analysing experimental data
   

Place of employment and place of work:
The place of employment is Aarhus University, and the place of work is Blichers Alle 20, 8830 Tjele.
 

Contacts:
Applicants seeking further information regarding the PhD position are invited to contact:

• Professor Uffe Jørgensen, Uffe.jorgensen@agro.au.dk (main supervisor)
• Senior advisor Søren Ugilt Larsen, soren.ugilt.larsen@agro.au.dk (co-supervisor)

For information about application requirements and mandatory attachments, please see our application guide. If answers cannot be found there, please contact:

• admission.gradschool.tech@au.dk
   

How to apply:
Please follow this link to submit your application.

Application deadline is 30 April 2025 at 23:59 CEST.

Preferred starting date is 1 July 2025.

Please note:

• Only documents received prior to the application deadline will be evaluated. Thus, documents sent after deadline will not be taken into account.
• The programme committee may request further information or invite the applicant to attend an interview.
• Shortlisting will be used, which means that the evaluation committee only will evaluate the most relevant applications.
   

Aarhus University’s ambition is to be an attractive and inspiring workplace for all and to foster a culture in which each individual has opportunities to thrive, achieve and develop. We view equality and diversity as assets, and we welcome all applicants. All interested candidates are encouraged to apply, regardless of their personal background.