University of Bergen
Saturday, August 1, 2020
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
About the position and the research environment
How we manage and use our landscapes is at the heart of both the climate crisis and the ongoing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The management of natural, as well as human-dominated areas, are simultaneously a major driver of the climate and nature crises, and, through management, central to their solutions. The scientific community plays a key role in providing the expertise and knowledge of the overall effects and consequences of various governance and management options to inform policy related to land-use management, and thus point to knowledge-based solutions for sustainable development. These challenges are fundamentally interdisciplinary and will require the use and development of knowledge in new ways. The Centre for Sustainable Area Management (CeSAM) is a new initiative to consolidate and strengthen UiB’s cross-disciplinary research and educational portfolio related to land-use, climate- and energy transformation, and sustainability. The vision is to generate new scientific knowledge, provide knowledge-based policy support and critique, and equip students with critical competences and skills for sustainability science relevant for the land-use management challenges underlying the climate and biodiversity crisis.
CeSAM is hosted by BIO, and the appointed associated professor will play a key role in strengthening UIB’s research and education related to land and ocean use, and sustainability from a biological perspective. In particular, BIO has taken a leading role in focusing on UN’s sustainability goals SDG14 Life below water and SDG15 Life on land, and the advertised position aims to strengthen UiB’s portfolio towards the latter. UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere programme (MAB) and its worldwide network of over 700 biosphere reserves, together with Norway’s first UNESCO Biosphere Area in Nordhordland, can provide important testing grounds for CeSAM’s research and educational activities.
Work tasks/research field:
The appointed associate professor will be working within the Evolution and Ecology subject area at BIO, which comprises ca 40 staff (permanent scientific positions, postdoctoral and PhD positions, and technical positions). The appointed associate professor is expected to take responsibility and collaborate with colleagues in the subject area of the position to develop high-quality research and education within this subject area at BIO. The successful candidate is also expected to play a leading role in building a research portfolio within CeSAM.
The appointed associate professor will also supervise students at the master’s and PhD levels, and will teach relevant courses within BIOs BSc and MSc programmes.
Professor Ørjan Totland