Senior Research Associate in Flood Risk

The role

The School of Geographical Sciences is seeking to appoint a full-time pathway 2 Research Associate in Flood Risk. The appointment starts in July 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.  The post has funding for up to four years as part of a new €10M European Research Council Synergy project, LIMIT2ADAPT which will quantitatively assess where and when the limits of adaptation to flood risk are reached at the global scale during the 21^st century.  .  The postholder will join the Hydrology Research group and be line managed by Professor Paul Bates CBE FRS.

What will you be doing?

The primary activity of the candidate will be to develop and analyse regional and global scale hydrodynamic models at multiple spatial scales accounting for climate change and integrating these results with a new global agent-based decision-making model being developed at VU Amsterdam.  This will be conducted within a full catastrophe modelling framework along the lines outlined by Bates et al. (2023) and Wing et al. (2024).

You will be expected to write up results for publication in leading international peer-review journals. You will also collaborate with end users in the engineering, governance, insurance, banking and finance sectors to better understand and document their requirements for adaptation planning.

You should apply if

The candidate should have:

• A good honours degree (or equivalent) with subject knowledge in the relevant area and some research experience.
• A relevant postgraduate research degree or equivalent professional qualification/experience or be working towards one.
• A strong understanding of flood inundation modelling, climate data or uncertainty analysis
• Excellent analytical skills within a package such as Python (preferred), MATLAB or R.
• Ability to work effectively and collaboratively within a large international science team.
• Experience or understanding of writing up results for publication in leading international peer-reviewed journals.

Additional information

Contract type: Open ended with four years fixed funding

Work pattern: 1 FTE

Shift pattern: Monday - Friday

This advert will close at 23:59 UK time on 20/05/2026

For informal queries please contact: Professor Paul Bates, Professor of Hydrology Email: Paul.Bates@bristol.ac.uk

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