Research Fellow on the Sajag-Nepal Project

Research Fellow on the Sajag-Nepal Project
Faculty of Engineering and Environment
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Sajag-Nepal: Planning and Preparedness for the Mountain Hazard and Risk Chain in Nepal

The Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at Northumbria University seeks to appoint a full-time Grade 6.1 Research Fellow to work with Dr Katie Oven and a wider consortium team on an interdisciplinary project titled ‘Sajag-Nepal: Planning and Preparedness for the Mountain Hazard and Risk Chain in Nepal’ (https://www.sajag-nepal.org/). Funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), the project aims to improve decision-making and preparedness in Nepal to mitigate the impacts and reduce the risks from the mountain hazard chain, including earthquakes, monsoon rainfall, and landslides. The project involves close collaboration between social and natural scientists, and a wide range of partner organisations in Nepal including local and national government, national and international NGOs, and the UN.

The objectives of the project are to: (i) contextualise the contemporary multi-hazard and systemic risk landscape in Nepal in order to understand how risk is produced, experienced, and negotiated by households and communities, and to embed this understanding in hazard and risk reduction and management; (ii) transform the earthquake planning process into national-scale preparedness planning for catastrophic multi-hazard events triggered by rare damaging earthquakes; (iii) transform the monsoon planning process into seasonal planning for monsoon-related multi-hazard events at a scale that is appropriate for local government decision-making; (iv) develop new protocols for embedding local, natural and social scientific knowledge of the mountain hazard and risk chain in preparedness and response.

The successful candidate will contribute primarily to objectives ii and iii and focus on developing current understandings of population exposure and vulnerability to earthquakes and landslide hazards in Nepal. Existing approaches to exposure modelling rely largely on outdated population data, with limited understanding of how exposure changes hourly, daily, weekly and seasonally. Further, there is a pressing need to understand the dynamics of vulnerabilities of the exposed population, with the aim of informing local and national-level risk reduction and preparedness activities. This is likely to involve the analysis of anonymised high-resolution data on population location and mobility to characterise spatial and temporal population movements, and participating in research with rural residents to better understand individual, household and community-level exposures and vulnerabilities to the mountain hazard chain.

The successful candidate will be based in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK, and affiliated to the Centre for International Development and a new cross-university multi-disciplinary initiative called Global Development Futures. They will be expected to work closely with team members at other institutions including Durham University in the UK, and the Universities of Canterbury and Auckland in the New Zealand, along with the Government of Nepal and the Humanitarian Country Team in Kathmandu. Knowledge of Nepal would be beneficial.   

The successful candidate will have a PhD in quantitative social science or in a related discipline. The position is available from 1 January 2023.

To apply for this vacancy please click ‘Apply Now’, and submit a covering letter, CV including research /education statements, and grants and publications list. Please highlight your highest quality research outputs up to a maximum of 4.  In addition, candidates are asked to provide copies of the top 2 research outputs (Journal / book chapter /practice-based portfolio). Where possible candidates are asked to combine all documents into a single file.

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We are an on-campus organisation where colleagues work regular patterns of hours and on campus, with some flexibility on the timing of their hours and the location of their work in discussion with their manager. 

Northumbria University is committed to creating an inclusive culture where we take pride in, and value, the diversity of our staff.  We encourage and welcome applications from all members of the community.  The University holds a bronze Athena Swan award in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality, we are a Disability Confident Employer, a member of the Race Equality Charter and are participating in the Stonewall Diversity Champion Programme.  We are also a member of the Euraxess network, which delivers information and support to professional researchers. The University has implemented a range of flexible working arrangements, and we are happy to explore candidate requirements as part of the recruitment process.  

Northumbria University is an on-campus organisation where colleagues work regular patterns of hours and on campus, with some flexibility on the timing of their hours and the location of their work in discussion with their manager. 

Please note this vacancy will close on 04/11/2022

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Further information

 

164689-Role Description – 13423