Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Location: Stirling Campus

The Post

To work in the research group of Dr Brad Duthie, Prof Nils Bunnefeld, and Dr Conor McKeown 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

The post-holder will develop new methods for analysing data collected from knowledge games and integrating them into social-ecological models. The post-holder will work with existing datasets and play an active role in developing a new knowledge game for data collection and integration with new agent-based modelling software. Principally, this will involve the following activities:

• Writing new code for data analysis and software integrating knowledge game data and agent-based models
• Leading on peer-reviewed publications
• Writing reports (e.g., to the funder)
• Collaborating with the team at the University of Stirling, James Hutton Institute, King’s College London and the company developing the game on broader project goals

Essential Criteria

• A PhD (or nearing completion) in quantitative biology, computer science, statistics, or a 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 see Vacancy details | University of Stirling

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