Most academic research in the Netherlands, and in particular PhD research, is organized by research schools. Some schools are local and others national. SOM (Systems, Organization and Management) is the research school established by the faculties of Economics and Management and Spatial Sciences of the RUG. It is a local school. Nethur (Netherlands Graduate School of Housing and Urban Research) is a national school with a focus on urban research. Nethur consists of staff members from research groups at the universities of Amsterdam, Delft, Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Utrecht and Groningen. Groningen joined Nethur recently. At the participating universities, the research groups are organised into research institutes. These institutes are:
- Amsterdam Study Center for the Metropolitan Environment (AME) at the University of Amsterdam
- Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies (OTB) at Delft University of Technology
- Faculty of Architecture (FB) at Eindhoven University of Technology
- Nijmegen School of Management (NSM) at the University of Nijmegen
- Urban Research Center Utrecht (URU) at Utrecht University
- Urban and Regional Studies Institute (URSI) at the University of Groningen
Previously, the PhD candidates in demography and economic geography were affiliated with SOM. The PhD candidates in planning and in regional geography previously participated Nethur activities. Recently, the Board of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the RUG decided to discontinue their participation in SOM and to participate in Nethur instead.
URSI is the research institute of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences. It was established a few years ago to coordinate the participation in the Nethur research school. After the discontinuation of their participation in SOM, the demography group has been participating in URSI and in Nethur. Some of the activities that were previously organized by SOM are now organized by URSI or Nethur, such as research conferences.
In 1989, the Netherlands Graduate School of Research in Demography (PDOD) was established. The PDOD was an initiative of the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Utrecht, the Catholic University of Brabant (Tilburg) and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague. The PDOD organised PhD level courses. The courses were scheduled during the first year of the PhD programme and were of 8 months duration. The PDOD continues to operate but without a stable inflow of students. In recent years, only the University of Groningen could maintain an adequate inflow. PDOD is currently revising its policy and strategy.
