Call for postdocs interested in working on “Sensing Disasters” (an interdisciplinary collaboration between CareNet & Wine research groups, IN3, UOC)
This offer is closed
We would like to inform you that our university, the Open University of Catalonia, has opened a call for five new three-year postdoctoral research stays at the UOC. The places are aimed at teaching staff and postdoctoral researchers specialized in any of the areas of knowledge covered by the University’s research groups. The deadline to apply is 1 March.
The call is geared towards researchers holding a doctoral degree from the UOC or another institution who meet the terms and conditions set forth by the call. Candidates holding a doctoral degree from the UOC must provide proof of having carried out at least one other postdoctoral stay at another university or research centre for a minimum of two years. To access the external announcement, click here.
This year candidates can request to carry out an interdisciplinary postdoctoral stay, an entirely new feature for calls of this nature. This option is the result of the UOC’s push for interdisciplinary research, as laid out in its Strategic Plan. For the purposes of this call, interdisciplinary research is considered to be research which merges knowledge and methodology from different disciplines through an observable synthesis or combination of approaches. This differs from multidisciplinary research, in which researchers from different disciplines work together.
In this context, CareNet & Wine research groups are calling for candidates to apply to a potential postdoc on “Sensing Disasters”:
Environmental and disaster science and governance have been significantly transformed by digital sensing infrastructures. Environmental monitoring via ICT, monitoring technologies, and IoT applications have become crucial for understanding, registering and managing an increasing number of environmental processes, epidemics or disasters. These technologies may be part of computational arrangements, making the environment programmable in the form of data inputs that are rendered calculative by computer systems. However, as sensors are not merely input devices that make nature available to human experience – they are also interventions that construct, for instance, notions of environmental pollution according to which variables are measured where, who can access and verify the data, etc. Indeed, these digital infrastructures also tend to become objects of great public scrutiny and debate, as well as part of numerous citizen science initiatives and environmental justice forms of activism.
With this call, we are seeking candidates that aim to engage in an interdisciplinary study/experiment of “participatory sensing” of disasters in Catalonia. The aim of the project is to bring social scientists and technologists to collaborate in the design, implementation and later analysis of sensors contributing to gather other voices, temporalities, geographies and intersections usually not represented in a particular socio-environmental issue. Some case studies we are interested in and that can inspire potential applications are:
- Pig slurry contamination: sensing and monitoring nitrates.
- Sensing and monitoring climate change wildfires.
- Sensing and monitoring air quality in urban or industrial environments.
Beneficiaries: the researchers awarded the available places must not have been employed by the UOC at any time during the two years prior to the publication of this call. The provisional decision for the call will be published from 3 April, and appeals can be made until 13 April. The appeals and final decision will then be made public from 17 April.
If you are interested in submitting a research proposal to this grant and join this interdisciplinary exploration, please send a motivation letter, a CV including a list of publications, and a statement on current and future research interests by email to irodriguezgir@uoc.edu or xvilajosana@uoc.edu by 21st February 2020.
This job was created on , and last edited on (EST)