Tenure Track Assistant Professor - Food, Biodiversity and Climate Nexus

JOB DESCRIPTION

Humanity is in a historical moment in which the capacity to live without irreversibly compromising the environmental and biophysical conditions on which it depends is dramatically questioned. Anthropogenic pressure on the Earth system has reached a point where abrupt environmental change is feared with global sustainability becoming a mere utopia. Despite the adoption of governance initiatives, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development there are significant challenges and intrinsic trade-offs that arise from the interaction of social and environmental systems. In particular, the interdependencies among the food, biodiversity and climate are central to the global sustainability question, and require interdisciplinary research approaches, such as integrative modelling methods. Academia has a central responsibility to address this challenge but is generally limited by the boundaries of disciplinary constraints. IVM is in a privileged position to leverage expertise from its four distinctive departments to become a central arena for sustainability research that is cross-cutting across core sustainability related themes. Therefore, we propose a Tenure Track position for Assistant Professor to strengthen IVMs capacity to conduct interdisciplinary research and teaching in the cross-cutting domain of food, biodiversity and climate. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the Tenure Track position, the position will be hosted by two or more departments at the IVM. Such a candidate would be able to leverage experience from different IVM departments and push for an integrative research approach and contribution to sustainability science.

Your duties

• The candidate is expected to engage in interdisciplinary research. The candidate should have a strong basis in economics, geography, environmental or political science, and should be able to combine this discipline with other scientific disciplines and have ample experience collaborating with other scientific disciplines within the sustainability domain. 
• In principle, teaching and research are strongly linked, allowing for mutual cross-fertilization. The candidate would play a central role in the ERM and GECP masters. The candidate could collaborate with most of IVM courses or create new ones on very relevant and emerging topics, strengthening the sustainability science profile of IVM.
• The candidate with an applied focus, quantitative skills and a good theoretical foundation. The candidate should be able to apply mixed-methods for field-work oriented and meta-analytical studies. 
• The candidate should be able to work on multiple scales, with a strong international focus, thereby show willingness to travel on a regular basis. 
• The candidate should show academic leadership, maintain a high publication output, and raise competitive research funding. On the longer term, the candidate is expected to build up a successful group around his/her field of expertise.
• Over time, the tenure track candidate will write innovative proposals to acquire external funds, thereby establishing a personal research domain within the field of sustainability science.
• In summary, we are looking for a person with many talents who can apply her/his skills in multiple fields.