Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

This full-time post is available from 1 September 2022 (or a mutually agreed date thereafter) on a fixed term basis until 31 August 2026 in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Subject to mutual agreement, this role may offer the opportunity for some hybrid working – some time on campus and some from home. 

The post

The College wishes to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work on the project “Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach (RENEW)”, a major Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded inter-disciplinary collaboration. The RENEW project seeks to develop solutions to one of the major environmental challenges for humankind, the renewal of biodiversity. 

The post holder will contribute to RENEW work on Community Action in collaborative research with Natural England, the government’s advisory body for the natural environment, and local governments. Specifically, the fellow will analyse the Health, Wellbeing, Nature and Sustainability (HWNS) strategic decision making tool to enable those responsible for local strategic planning to make evidence-based decisions that help people and nature to thrive and contribute to sustainable development. The postholder’s work will include iteratively testing the development of the tool dashboard with a mixed user group, and analysing communication and stakeholder participation in use of the tool. The post holder is expected to take the lead in implementation of the research design which will use behavioural social science theories and methods to test out elements of the HWNS tool. The tool has a dashboard, key metrics of performance and systems maps about processes leading to outcomes and the research will include interaction with members of the public, elected members and local government staff. The post holder will further conduct online surveys (potentially including survey experiments), data analysis and reporting of findings, including contributing as a co-author to academic publications and short policy briefings.

About you

Applicants will possess a relevant PhD or equivalent qualification/experience in behavioural social science research as typically found, for example, in the fields of: public policy, political science, public management/administration, ecological economics, behavioural economics, psychology, geography, public health, social policy or sociology and possess sufficient specialist knowledge in the discipline to develop research programmes and methodologies. The applicant will show aptitude for research design, implementation, data analysis and reporting, and production of academic papers suitable for publication in leading academic journals, and for producing short policy briefings. Evidence of satisfying these requirements includes: PhD qualification, other qualifications, academic journal publications, conference papers, production of datasets or other outputs, publication of peer-reviewed research, evidence of use of best practice in your field. 

The successful applicant will be able to work collaboratively with academics (including Professor Oliver James at Exeter) and policy makers (especially at Natural England and in local government), organise and implement research, supervise the work of others as required and work on research objectives, projects and proposals. The post holder will potentially contribute to further building on the achievements of the RENEW project in the design of future work and funding bids.

Please ensure you read the Job Description and Person Specification for full details of this role. 

Further information

For further information please contact Professor Oliver James o.james@ex.ac.uk

The closing date for completed applications is 5^th July 2022.  Interviews are expected to take place during the second half of July 2022. 

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