Research Associate

Company description:

We are a world class research-intensive university. We deliver teaching and learning of the highest quality. We play a leading role in economic, social and cultural development of the North East of England. Attracting and retaining high-calibre people is fundamental to our continued success.

Job description:

The Role

We are looking for Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on a 4-year long Natural Environment Research Council funded project: Deplete and Retreat: the future of Andean Water Towers.

This is an exciting opportunity for a glaciologist and remote sensor to advance their research experience and career development, working with and being mentored by leading researchers across glaciology, hydrology and climate change. You will be given scope to shape key aspects of research design as part of a talented team working together on this new interdisciplinary research project. As part of the role, you will be supported to publish articles with other team members, develop innovative research methodologies and establish networks with scholars working on Andean glaciology, hydrology and climate. The project includes funding for fieldwork and to support conference attendance. There are also opportunities to undertake an extended research placement in South America. You will also have time and support in developing further research proposals to take your own research ideas to their next stage.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from everybody, regardless of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital status/civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, as well as being open to flexible working practices.

The Project

The food and water security of 90 million people depends on the Andean mountain water towers. Climate change is depleting the stores of water held in snow and is causing glacier retreat. These cryospheric changes are spatio-temporally complex, with fewer, and more extreme, precipitation events, and glacio-climatic feedbacks that modulate glacier mass loss. Understanding the changing role of the Cryosphere in catchment hydrology is vital for water resource management. The aim of this project is to assess the sensitivity of water resources across the Andes to the changing supplies of snow and ice.

Deplete and Retreat has been co-developed and co-produced with colleagues and partners in Chile, Peru and Bolivia, and with the World Glacier Monitoring Service. This position will involve organising and, if desired, participating in fieldwork to the Andes to deploy sensitive monitoring equipment in four mountain catchments, and remote sensing of glacier change from the last Latest Holocene Neoglaciation to the present day. These datasets will be essential for model calibration and validation, and allow a better understanding of the ongoing response of catchments to climate change.

The project is led by the Physical Geography research group within the School of Geography Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. You would be joining a project team working closely with Dr Bethan Davies (Newcastle) and colleagues at the universities of Sheffield, Leeds, Imperial, Ulster, Kings College London and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. This means you will be working with a team with a range of expertise and disciplinary interests across the fields of glaciology, hydrology, climate change and associated areas.

This is a full-time post, for a period of 30 months.

If you have any queries regarding this role, please contact Bethan.davies@newcastle.ac.uk

Advert information