PhD in Global Talent Mobility and Europe’s Strategic Autonomy

The Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University has opened one, fully funded, position for a four-year PhD research project on global migration and Europe’s strategic autonomy.

Your job
Talent is a critical yet scarce resource in contemporary innovation systems. Across Europe, concerns about competitiveness, resilience, and strategic autonomy have renewed attention to the role of highly skilled human capital. At the same time, geopolitical tensions, migration restrictions, and national security considerations may constrain the international mobility of researchers, potentially reshaping global knowledge networks and innovation outcomes.

This PhD project examines how Europe’s strategic innovation ambitions depend on the mobility of global talent, with a particular focus on STEM PhD recipients as key actors in science- and technology-based innovation. The project bridges economic geography and innovation studies to understand how doctoral training, international mobility, and institutional contexts shape where knowledge is created and where it is ultimately translated into technological and economic value.

The project combines large-scale longitudinal data on PhD recipients with complementary sources such as publication and patent data, and aims to enrich these with other sources on individual paths and preferences. The PhD candidate will have the opportunity to develop unique datasets and apply quantitative and mixed-method approaches to address policy-relevant questions at the intersection of innovation, migration, and geography.

Main responsibilities include:

• Designing the research project focusing on topics related to global talent interdependencies and innovation;
• Collecting, processing and analysing large-scale data (e.g. publication, patent, and career data);
• Writing and publishing research papers in fulfilment of the PhD requirements;
• Presenting your research at (inter)national conferences, workshops, and seminars;
• Completing a dissertation within four years;
• Contributing to the teaching activities of the department.

The successful candidate will be based at the Economic Geography Section of the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, with close collaboration with the Innovation Studies Section at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Both groups are leading internationally in their respective disciplines and provide an exciting and collaborative environment, with room to learn and develop professionally at the frontier of academic research.

You will work under the supervision of Dr Burcu Özgün, Dr Giovanna Capponi, and Professor Carolina Castaldi.