Three-Year Post-Doctoral Fellowship Opportunity

DEADLINE: 1 DECEMBER 2008

Initiative on the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy

SDEP

The Beckman Institute

and

School of Earth, Society and Environment

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Interaction between society and the Earth’s environment has reached unprecedented intensity and scale. Attempts to manage this interaction are involving the formulation of environmental policies, which have multiple objectives and far-reaching social consequences. The Initiative on “Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy” (SDEP) of the Beckman Institute and U. Illinois’ new School of Earth, Society and Environment (SESE) will be dedicated to the pursuit of socially and politically sound solutions to society’s mounting environmental dilemmas. The initiative will: 1) conduct research on the human dimensions of environmental change and policy; 2) serve as a forum for collaboration among social and natural science faculty within SESE and across the U. Illinois campus; and, in the long run, 3) link U. Illinois researchers with policy makers and policy-making processes in Illinois, across the US, and globally. The initiative’s aim is to apply rigorous social-science research to the making of just and sustainable environmental policy.

Most environmental policy initiatives are centered around natural-science research on the physical origins and implications of environmental problems and efforts to relate the resulting knowledge to policy formulation. However, many societal problems stemming from local and global environmental change—and from the policies being developed to mitigate and adapt to change—are beyond the scope of technical fixes, and ordinary legal or economic analyses. The SDEP initiative will emphasize social-science research on the 1) causes of environmental change, 2) causes of social problems related to the environment, and 3) on the making, implementation and effects of policy solutions on society and the environment. It will generate policy-relevant knowledge on how policy affects wealth, poverty and distributional equity; health and wellbeing; security and vulnerability; democracy and justice; and political sustainability.  

In its first phase, SDEP will focus on two environmental themes—climate- society interactions and environment- democracy linkages. Both are already the focus of much research on the U. Illinois campus. As the initiative gathers momentum, it will broaden its scope to include research on human rights, justice and democracy in relation to water policy, energy policy, biofuels production, urbanization, forest carbon offsets, biodiversity conservation, extractive industries, and international trade policies.

Faculty, post-doctoral and doctoral fellows will have access to a wide variety of resources on the U. Illinois campus. Within SESE the initiative will collaborate with the Center for Water as a Complex Environmental System. At the campus level it will coordinate activities with the Sustainable Energy and the Environment Initiative. The initiative will also seek collaborations with the Cline Center for Democracy, the Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society, the Center for Business and Public Policy, and the area studies centers. The initiative will also encourage collaborations with the excellent natural-science and engineering research at U. Illinois and elsewhere focused on environmental processes and environmental problem-solving. Drawing on the interdisciplinary research strengths of the Beckman Institute, the initiative aims to establish a truly interdisciplinary approach to sustainability founded on an integration of the natural and social sciences, and engineering.  

The initiative will be structured around 1) thematic seminars series featuring U. Illinois faculty and other renowned researchers and active policy makers; 2) a working-paper series, 3) graduate and faculty fellows from the U. Illinois campus; 4) occasional theme-related post-doctoral fellows; 5) periodic workshops or symposia emerging from research at the initiative; and 6) faculty-led (externally funded) research initiatives. A pedagogical function of the initiative will be to expose students and faculty to the analysis of social causes of environmental change and research on environmental policy making and implementation.

Post-doctoral appointments are for three years. The post doctoral fellowship application deadline is 1 December 2008. Please note that all materials—including letters of recommendation are due on or before 1 December 2008.

Please carefully follow the application instructions on the Beckman Institute web page: http://www.beckman. illinois. edu/fellows/ postdoc.aspx.

Funding

Funding for Beckman Institute Fellows consists of an initial stipend amounting to $52,000 annually. In addition, each three-year fellowship is awarded $25,000, plus a health insurance.

For more information also see:

The Beckman Institute

http://www.beckman. illinois. edu

School of Earth, Society and Environment

http://www.earth. uiuc.edu  

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

http://illinois. edu  

Department of Geography

http://www.geog. uiuc.edu/ department

SDEP Director

Jesse C. Ribot

Department of Geography

University of Illinois