Postdoctoral Research Associate – Quantitative Social Science, W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation
The W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana seeks applicants for a 12-month Postdoctoral Research Associate position renewable for multiple years. The postdoc will work directly with Assistant Professor of Water Policy & Governance, Brian Chaffin, in the Department of Society & Conservation on a NSF EPSCoR-funded research project titled “Resilience Informatics for the Convergence of Critical Capacities to Address Regional-scale Environmental Change.” This research leverages large-scale spatial data to better understand and respond to landscape-scale social-ecological transitions in near real-time. Utilizing this technological capacity, the team hopes to better understand how individuals (e.g. landowners, land managers, conservation professionals) across rural, working landscapes in the American West engage in pressing conservation challenges through the adoption (or not) of new technology, and the use of social networks for sharing and receiving information on conservation and land management.
The successful applicant will engage as a critical member of the social science team, working to complement the big data approaches of the biophysical science team through: the collection of large, publicly-available social data-sets for analysis of spatial patterns and temporal trends; and social network analyses (SNA) of nested case studies in Montana and Nebraska aimed at better understanding local conservation practices and decision-making. The successful candidate will have:
- Strong theoretical foundations in a social science discipline including but not limited to geography, anthropology, sociology, interdisciplinary conservation or environmental social sciences
- Familiarity with complexity thinking and social-ecological resilience concepts
- Proficiency with quantitative social data analysis tools in coding environments such as R, Python, MatLab, etc.
The postdoctoral associate will have the opportunity to develop and teach seminars for PhD and MS-level graduate students in quantitative social science methods, and to engage in an integrative, interdisciplinary conservation social science curriculum that includes a wide range of methodological and theoretical training including ethics and policy sciences. In addition, the postdoc will collaborate and coordinate weekly with postdoctoral associates and other team members at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, serving as a link between project partners and research nodes. The postdoctoral associate will be encouraged and funded to pursue external training in research tools and analytical skills such as social network analysis and text analysis via machine learning, and will receive training and mentorship in interdisciplinary, team-based, social-ecological research.
The deadline to apply is December 11, 2019 by 11:59PM (Mountain Time).
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