Postdoctoral Research Fellow

The Post

Position 2
To work in the research group of Dr Brad Duthie, Prof Nils Bunnefeld, Dr Diana Valero (James Hutton Institute), and Dr Yuan Pan (King’s College London) on the UKRI cross research council responsive mode pilot scheme project entitled, “Ecological Knowledge Games” (EcoKnowGames). The post will be employed on an 24 month fixed term contract.

How humans collectively respond to environmental change will ultimately determine the degree to which many global challenges of the 21st century are successfully met. Decision-makers must urgently tackle these global challenges, which are reflected across multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including conserving biodiversity (SDGs 14 & 15), ensuring food and water security (SDG 2, 3 & 6), and responding to climate change (SDGs 7 & 13). Finding effective SDG solutions is critical but often hindered by the undesirable risk, high cost, and long timescale of their implementation. Testing proposed solutions that rely on large-scale or long-term social coordination or collective action is often intractable in real systems. If solutions could instead be tested with real people in realistic virtual worlds, their effectiveness could be evaluated risk free and at low cost through the development of suitable knowledge games.

Description of Duties

Position 2
The post-holder will facilitate stakeholder workshops, collect survey data and analyse data collected from knowledge games to investigate the costs, benefits, and consistencies across different methodologies. A key goal will be to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of using knowledge games to make inferences about player motivations and values, especially with respect to SDGs. The post-holder will work closely with team members across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and contribute to the development of new knowledge games for testing hypotheses in the social sciences. Principally, this post will involve the following activities: 

• Facilitating workshops and surveys with stakeholder groups in relation to UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Leading on peer-reviewed publications
• Writing reports (e.g. to funder)

Essential Criteria

Position 2

• A PHD (or nearing completion) in social sciences or economics or closely related field
• Evidence of being able to conduct research independently
• Evidence of good project management skills

For further information, including a full description of duties, essential criteria and details on how to apply, please click the apply button above.

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