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Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Climate and Energy Transformations
There is a vacancy for a postdoctoral research fellow position at Department of Geography within Climate and Energy transformation. The position is for a period of 3 years. The official job posting can be found here: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/121933/postdoctoral-research-fellow About the project/work tasks The Spaces of Climate and Energy Lab (SpaceLab) is a research group at the Department of Geography, University of Bergen, focusing on the interrelations between climate, energy and society. With funding from Bergen Research Foundation (BFS), SpaceLab is now expanding to develop internationally leading research on climate and energy transformations. The postdoctoral fellow will form part of SpaceLab, and contribute to the group’s research agenda by conducting a research project on the geographies of climate and energy transformation. Relevant project proposals will examine social, political, economic or environmental aspects of climate and energy transitions and transformations. The empirical context should be Europe. Funding for the postdoctoral position comes from the Akademia agreement between the University of Bergen and Statoil, and from the Bergen Research Foundation. Qualifications and personal qualities: - The applicant must hold a PhD within human geography or equivalent and must have submitted his/her doctoral thesis for assessment prior to the application deadline. It is a condition of employment that the PhD has been awarded. - Work independently and in a structured manner, and have the ability to cooperate with others. - Proficiency in both written and oral English. Interviews will be used as part of the evaluation process and potential candidates may be invited to hold a trial lecture. Applicants should be aware that written evaluations of each candidate will be made available to all applicants, as per Norwegian regulations. Applicants are advised to familiarize themselves with the teaching and research profile at the Department, please see http://www.uib.no/en/geografi . About the position of postdoctoral research fellow: The position of postdoctoral research fellow is a fixed-term appointment with the primary objective of qualifying the appointee for work in top academic positions. The fixed-term period for this position is 3 years. Individuals may not be hired for more than one fixed-term period as a postdoctoral research fellow at the same institution. We can offer: - A good and professionally challenging working environment. - Salary at pay grade 57(code 1352) on the government salary scale upon appointment (equivalent to NOK 482 800,- per year). Further promotions are made according to length of service in the position. - Enrolment in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund. - A position in an inclusive workplace (IW). - Good welfare benefits. Your application must include: - A project proposal (5-8 pages) explaining the intended theoretical contributions of the project, as well as the methodological foundations and the plans for empirical data collection. - A brief account of the applicant's research interests and motivation for applying for the position. - The names and contact information for two reference persons. One of these must be the main advisor from the PhD programme. - CV including a list of publications - Transcripts and diplomas and official confirmation that the doctoral thesis has been submitted. - Relevant certificates/references. - Up to five scientific publications The application and appendices with certified translations into English or a Scandinavian language must be uploaded at Jobbnorge following the link on this page (above) marked “Apply for this job”. In cases of scientific work in paper version, this must be sent as ordinary post, sorted in 3 folders, to the University of Bergen, The Faculty of Social Sciences, P.O. Box 7802, N-5020 Bergen, Norway. The application has to be marked with: 16/1154 The closing date is April 1, 2015 Applications sent by e-mail will not be evaluated. We kindly ask the applicants to follow the guidelines for applicants to postdoctoral fellowships positions at the Faculty of Social Sciences closely. The guidelines are obtainable by contacting post@svfa.uib.no. General information: Additional information about the position is obtainable by contacting Researcher and project leader Håvard Haarstad, e-mail havard.haarstad@uib.no, phone + 47 555 84 581 or Head of Department, Professor Svein Olaf Dahl, e-mail: svein.dahl@uib.no, phone + 47 555 83 065. Practical questions regarding the application procedures should be directed to senior officer Bodil Hægland, phone +47 55 58 90 53, e-mail: bodil.hagland@uib.no. The state labour force shall reflect the diversity of Norwegian society to the greatest extent possible. Age and gender balance among employees is therefore a goal. It is also a goal to recruit people with immigrant backgrounds. People with immigrant backgrounds and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply for the position. We encourage women to apply. If multiple applicants have approximately equivalent qualifications, the rules pertaining to moderate gender quotas shall apply. The University of Bergen applies the principle of public access to information when recruiting staff for academic positions. Information about applicants may be made public even if the applicant has asked
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SENIX Conference in Stockholm on June 13-15, 2016 – The Role of Social Sciences in a Low-Carbon Energy Mix
Web site: www.delegia.com/senix2016 NEWS:
Group workshop Community of inquiry of the concept of development, organized by Tulsa Jansson, Linköping University, Founder of Swedish Society for Philosophical Practice
SCORAI holds conferences in every other year. 2016 conference is in Orono, ME this June. Here's the information about it.
On behalf of the Program Committee for the 2016 Conference of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI) being held at the University of Maine on June 15‒17, 2016, we are pleased to release the first preliminary agenda for the event. We are also delighted to note that the program includes papers and posters from more than 200 scholars representing 26 countries! Together we will cover a wide range of topics—from sustainable food, alternative economies, and urban transformations to theories of social movements and socio-technical transitions. We ask that you kindly check the schedule, available on the conference website and please forward this message on to your co-authors (for whom email addresses were not provided during abstract submission). Please inform us, as soon as possible, if corrections are needed or your plans have changed. Information about travel, accommodation, registration and the post-conference excursion to Acadia National Park is available on the conference website. Early bird registration rates are available until March 15, so please register soon! Registration rates include meals, refreshments and a one year membership to SCORAI. We have invited several presentations from scholars traveling from developing countries, many of whom receive no financial assistance from their institutions. If you, like us, are interested in participating in an inclusive and diverse conference, please consider adding a small donation to your registration fee to support scholars in need of assistance. You can also contribute via ourcrowdfunding campaign. Please remember that full papers are due May 1st (instructions for submission forthcoming). SCORAI –sponsored events provide a unique opportunity for deeper engagement by utilizing this format—which enables participants to read others’ work prior to the conference. We strongly encourage you to get your papers in so that your contribution will have maximum impact and our time together can be used most effectively to advance shared learning and collective knowledge. Please note the pre-conference workshops and “dialog” sessions included in the program. These sessions invite participation in a less formal and more discussion-oriented format. The Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) and OneEarth have developed the workshop “Identifying Promising Strategies for Advancing Sustainable Consumption in Cities” and Maurie Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and Peter Wells (Cardiff University) will be moderating a conversation on “The Burdens of Wealth: Impacts of ‘Decadent Consumption’”. We welcome your participation in these events! We have also included, with this email, a call for participation for a dialog session on teaching sustainable consumption (see attachment and note the February 15th deadline). Finally, we’d like to remind you of SCORAI’s new Early Career Scholar Award. If you are currently enrolled in a graduate program or are within four years from the completion of your PhD, you are eligible to submit your paper for consideration. For more information, please visit the conference website. We very much look forward to what promises to be a wonderful conference! Thank you all very much for your interesting contributions. We look forward to welcoming you to Maine in June and to a fruitful future of collaboration. If you’re not already subscribed, please consider joining the SCORAI listserv for updates, announcements, and sustained interaction with the SCORAI community! Cindy, Philip & the Conference Organizing Committee -- Cindy Isenhour, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Cooperating Faculty, Climate Change Institute and School of Economics Faculty Associate, Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions University of Maine 303.807.6515 http://umaine.edu/anthropology/faculty-staff/dr-cindy-isenhour/ Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice The 7th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference will take place on September 6-9, 2016 at the Wuppertal Institute in Wuppertal, Germany.
Following the theme of IST 2016 “Exploring Transition Research as Transformative Science“ we want to focus on impact- and solution-oriented research approaches enabling transitions in practice. We invite contributions that address the following questions: How can we assess the societal impact of transition research? What are common challenges, best practices and future prospects in transdisciplinary research approaches, such as real-world laboratories, LivingLabs, transition experiments etc.? We invite contributions focusing on key issues in the field of sustainability transitions research: the role of cities and geography of transitions, governance of transitions, transitions towards a sustainable economy, global perspectives on transitions, innovation and institutional change, modeling transitions - and all issues linked to the research agenda of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN). Among the conference contributions, papers will be selected for a Special Issue in the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (EIST). For more information see the attached Call for Papers, which can also be downloaded at the conference website: www.ist2016.org 4S/EASST 2016 Conference
Barcelona, August 31st- September 3rd 2016 Invitation to submit papers to track T050: Conceptualizing transformational change in energy systems and the built environment Convenors Harald Rohracher (Linköping University), harald.rohracher@liu.se Jenny Palm (Linköping University), jenny.palm@liu.se Thomas Berker (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), thomas.berker@ntnu.no Michael Ornetzeder (Austrian Academy of Sciences), michael.ornetzeder@oeaw.ac.at Eva Heiskanen (University of Helsinki), eva.heiskanen@helsinki.fi Short descriptionThis session brings concepts of transformational socio-technical change in the energy system and built environment in conversation with each other. How are transition studies, practice theory or assemblage theory differing in questions of agency, governance or the collectives they are articulating? AbstractDuring the past decades the energy and building sectors have increasingly come under pressure to undergo fundamental change processes. A radical transformation of these socio-technical systems towards greater sustainability and low carbon emissions is key to combat climate change and resource depletion. At the same time, the materiality of energy and buildings is deeply entangled with social practices of everyday live and energy use and broader socio-material configurations such as systems of mobility or processes of urban development and change. The aim of this session is to bring different conceptual approaches within STS and innovation studies used in this context into conversation with each other. Some recent examples of such attempts to conceptualize socio-technical change and transformation in the energy system and built environment are social practice theory, transition studies, innovation systems analyses, assemblage theory, or concepts of social worlds and arenas of development. The session invites both, empirical case studies on energy or buildings and conceptual papers on transformational socio-technical change, and will be organized around questions such as: How are approaches in STS and innovation studies differing in their conceptualization of socio-technical change? Which implicit assumptions about the governability and implications for the governance of change are harbored by these approaches? How are they dealing differently with questions of agency? And along with the conference theme: Do those different conceptual approaches tend to articulate different collectives implicated in the energy system and built environment? Propose a paper to this session Application deadline: 21 February 2016 Conference webpage: http://www.sts2016bcn.org For over a year I've been asking whether people know of attempts to use GIS to identify optimal locations for wind and solar facilities. My thought was that we would develop GIS layers for key factors such as: land ownership, access to roads and power lines, visibility to settled areas and traveled roads, etc... Then we would overlap a map of resource availability (hours of sunlight or wind over certain speeds). The result would be a map that could help plan how we move to a society fueled by renewable energy.
Well, today I learned about a student GIS project team at Stanford that elected to do this for Washington State. Their webpage with their maps and report is available here. It doesn't look like a permanent site, so you might try searching for: Group 11: Washington State Renewable Energy: Identifying Optimal Locations. By: Lindsay Willman, Michael Galka, Andrea Romano, Danny Stewart. While certainly valuable, I think we need to be highly conscious of the way that maps like this might make land owners feel. I suppose some people might be excited about the possibility of their land being developed for renewable energy. But others might feel threatened by their parcel's inclusion in a map of a wind or solar farm. Ideally, Washington needs to begin having renewable energy dialogues with people across the state about how to make the transition off of fossil fuels. Maps like these might help stimulate interest in such dialogues. It would also be advantageous to have another GIS team independently do the same analysis to see how much certainty we have about the suitability of these locations. There is lots of work to be done if we are to transition off of fossil fuels. It's exciting to see what student project teams can do! The 7th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference will take place in Wuppertal, Germany from 6 - 9 September 2016.
The conference is the annual platform to share theoretical, empirical and practical advances in the field of sustainability transitions, covering a broad range of areas (e.g. energy, water, mobility, food systems) and disciplinary approaches. Following the theme of IST 2016 “Exploring Transition Research as Transformative Science“ we want to focus on impact- and solution-oriented research approaches enabling transitions in practice. We invite contributions that address the following questions: How can we assess the societal impact of transition research? What are common challenges, best practices and future prospects in transdisciplinary research approaches, such as real-world laboratories, LivingLabs, transition experiments etc.? We invite contributions focusing on key issues in the field of sustainability transitions research: the role of cities and geography of transitions, governance of transitions, transitions towards a sustainable economy, global perspectives on transitions, innovation and institutional change, modeling transitions - and all issues linked to the research agenda of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN). For more information see the attached Call for Papers, which can also be downloaded at the conference website: ist2016.org We want to make IST 2016 a very practical transition experience and we are pleased to welcome you to Wuppertal, our urban real-world lab with its many exciting projects and initiatives. We are looking forward to an engaging and impactful IST 2016. Uwe Schneidewind, President of the Wuppertal Institute Karoline Augenstein & Franziska Stelzer (IST 2016 Organizing Committee) On December 4th, 2015 my favorite radio program, OnPoint from WBUR-Boston, aired a discussion about the role of nuclear power in climate change in the USA. Guests included former NRC Chairwoman Alison Macfarlane, Josh Freed of the Third Way think tank in DC and Mark Jacobson of Stanford. Freed made a statement that astounded me. He claimed that, after Germany elected to discontinue its nuclear power stations, it experienced a "significant increase in carbon emissions" (his quote can be found at 16:00-16:15 in the broadcast). This is plainly untrue, as the data below show. In 2011, Germany decided to shut down EIGHT nuclear reactors, with total capacity of about 8 GW. The list is available here. Look at the bar for 2011 and compare it with 2010. Actually, GHG emissions DECLINED. There is a slight uptick in 2013, but no additional reactors were closed in 2012. The remaining reactors won't close until 2019-2022. The fact is that nuclear power has been replaced with solar and wind energy.  Macfarlane acknowledged that nuclear should remain part of the solution, but she cautioned against assuming it could play an expanded role in American's energy future. She pointed out that nuclear plants take 20-25 years to construct and make operational. Given that we need to reduce carbon significantly in the next 15 years, new plants are not likely to be part of that solution. Mark Jacobson added that dollars tied up for 20 years would be better spent putting wind or solar energy into action. Wind farms and solar arrays can be constructed on the order of 3 years. Furthermore, Jacobson noted that nuclear plants currently produce expensive energy - 13 cents per kWh while wind produces power at much much lower price. Freed responded by advancing utopian technological views of the future. As so many in the nuclear field do, he suggested that new plant designs will be cheaper and safer. Maybe so, but none of these designs have every been built or made operational. Freed blamed the NRC, saying, the the NRC should "develop a new set of regulatory and evaluation processes built toward getting innovative new designs tested and deployed" (quote starts at 19:55 in broadcast). Sacrificing safety for speed hardly seems like a smart thing to do, given the relatively poor record of the nuclear industry. Mark Jacobson pointed out that 1.5% of the world's nuclear reactors have melted down. This is a pretty poor safety record. Sure, new technologies may be safer, but they may also be less safe. We simply won't know until we have a few decades of experience under our belts, which is why countries with a lot of nuclear experience, such as France continue to rely on light water reactor designs. The take home message for me is that, while we won't likely see nuclear power abandoned in places other than Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, we also are not likely to see nuclear play much of an additional role in reducing carbon emissions. Last summer there was talk about the impacts of climate change on the Pacific Northwest. Famed meteorologist and weather blogger, Cliff Mass, argued that the PNW could be a refuge from climate change. http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2014/07/will-pacific-northwest-be-climate.html
http://www.kplu.org/post/why-northwest-potential-climate-refuge-effects-global-warming As he is a meteorologist, it is not surprising that he focuses mainly on sea level rise, precipitation, and temperature, although at the end of his post he does mention the possible challenge of incoming climate refugees (from California). While the PNW may not directly experience extreme weather effects, this does not make it a climate refuge. In fact, I argue that the idea of a climate refuge is inherently inconsistent with a globally connected world. Here, I make two simple points. First, as several commentators to his blog post already pointed out, the PNW is not immune to ocean acidification. The absorption of CO2 into oceans is changing their acidity, with the predictable outcomes for ocean ecology. Species that are vulnerable to acidity will find it increasingly difficult to reproduce or survive. Shellfish growers along Washington’s coasts are already finding that shellfish cannot reproduce reliability or as productively in natural waters due to the rise in acidity that we have already seen. Other species that are commercially fished or harvested as traditional food in indigenous cultures are also affected. The oceans have always connected the PNW to the rest of the world. Moreover, we are connected to people in distant places economically as well, in a manner that should dispel the myth of a “climate refuge.” We live and depend on a globally interconnected economy, consequently, there is no haven, no protected space that is insulated from climate shocks whose immediate effects are felt elsewhere. When distant places are affected by extreme weather, the effects eventually are felt by us too. Recently, the National Research Council completed a report for the US intelligence community, documenting the threats that climate change pose to US national security. While the study excluded several major items (like protective actions countries may take to make themselves more resilient, such as land grabs in Africa, or direct threats to the US military’s ability to conduct operations) and while it focused only on climate threats with immediate impacts outside of the USA, it did highlight a number of important pathways by which Americans, no matter where they live, could experience. I won’t review the entire report here. One example should be enough to carry the point. For more detail, read chapter 4 in the report, all NAS reports are available free on-line. This one is available at the National Academy website here. Consider the globally connected food system. This system has developed to ensure there is access to food around the globe. Countries whose domestic supply falls short can purchase grain on the world market. However, this food system has evolved under an earlier climate regime. In other words, it has developed to produce and transport certain amounts and types of foods in certain temporal and geographic patterns. A different climate regime that places extraordinary stresses upon this system may cause it to underperform, particularly in the short-term. Extreme weather leads to poor harvests. As demand for food increases so does the price. We have experienced this in recent years, most notably 2010-2011. Lack of food or high prices can also lead to social unrest, which can have myriad consequences. For instance, the report discusses how a heat wave in Russia let to high wheat prices in 2011, and high prices were one impetus for the Arab Spring. While we need to be careful about asserting causality with any one stream of events, it is the larger underlying pattern of connections and vulnerabilities that the study committee focused upon. Even if we zoom in to just the USA, we see the same pattern of spatial interdependencies that make claims of a “climate haven” dubious. Consider this. Weather-related impacts in the USA can have numerous impacts on people living in places that are not immediately affected. For instance, one-third of US petroleum production is located in the Gulf of Mexico and other coastal areas. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 shut down all petroleum production in the Gulf and Superstorm Sandy impacted oil imports and refining on the East Coast. Both to higher petroleum prices throughout the country. Those higher prices are immediately felt in the PNW, even though we did not experience either of those storms. The lesson is: geographical distance is no protection in a world with integrated markets. While we all want to find a silver lining in the devastating story of climate change, any silver linings we find will pale against the other consequences. The fact is there is no such thing as a climate haven in an interconnected world. Globalization has made us one. Believing that we in the PNW somehow enjoy special protections by virtue of our oceans, mountains, wind patters, or whatever is misguided and dangerous. It is misguided because it is plainly not true. The oceans connect us. The economy connects us. It is dangerous because it may encourage us to withdraw from our collective responsibility to act to mitigate and adapt to global climate change. This is a global problem. We are part of the global community. Climate change is a problem for us and for future generations. All of us are needed to solve it. The Pacific Northwest is no haven from the changes that are coming. PhD scholarship in Sustainable Energy Transitions in Developing CountriesThe Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development, part of the UNEP DTU Partnership, invites applications for a PhD research project focused on sustainable energy transitions in developing countries Over the past 25 years, the Centre on Climate, Energy and Sustainable development of the UNEP DTU Partnership (formerly UNEP Risoe Centre) (www.unepdtu.org) has become a leading international research and advisory hub on energy, climate and sustainable Development.
The Partnership is an integrated part of the Department of Management Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The Centre works in close partnership with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and has project activities in more than 50 developing countries. The Centre collaborates with a large number of national and international government and research institutions, especially in developing countries. Background There are various factors driving a transition to more ‘green’ energy systems, using technologies that harness local renewable and/or low-carbon sources of energy as a means to increase energy access and sustain economic growth. While these transitions are taking place in some countries, it is far from being a uniform process and the precise mechanisms of change are often not clearly understood and therefore replicable. This requires field research to be undertaken on a specific technology in one or possibly two case study countries, preferably in Africa or Asia. We are looking to conduct a PhD project that focuses on medium and large-scale technologies, such as utility-size solar power, grid-connected biomass power plants (including cogeneration) or hydro-power plants, though there is scope to consider small-scale technologies, such as solar home systems. The research could involve case studies of specific donor interventions, firm and industry-level processes, and government reform initiatives. Project aims This research project will focus on the overall topic of low-carbon energy innovation in developing countries with a specific focus on the role and influence of Government, the private sector and donor agencies. The broad aim will be to provide an improved understanding of the interface between the State, markets and donors as they relate to the development and uptake of low-carbon energy technologies. Research methodology The project will pursue an interdisciplinary analytical framework combining different theoretical perspectives as well as methodological approaches. One option is to situate this research within the innovation system literature on socio-technical transitions, which includes the multilevel perspective, strategic niche management and technological innovation systems. Another option is to follow the economic geography literature, focusing on spatial aspects of innovation and transitions, and/or political ecology, which is concerned with exploring issues of power relations, political struggle, actor contestation, knowledge and discourse. Research methods should preferably be in the form of qualitative (primary) data collection and analysis, as a complement to desk-based literature reviews and quantitative (secondary) data collection. The research should be solidly grounded in a prolonged period of in-depth, empirical field research. The final thesis will be structured and presented as four academic articles, in addition to an analytical overview/synthesis explaining the theoretical framework and research methods. Qualifications Candidates should have a Master’s degree in a relevant social science discipline (for example economics, development studies, human geography, international business and management, political science, innovation studies, philosophy), ideally with a focus or component on sustainable energy and climate change mitigation and/or business and innovation studies. Strong oral and written English communication skills are essential. Knowledge of another major European language is desirable but not necessary, as is prior experience with working in a developing country. Candidates will be expected to demonstrate the ability to work independently, to plan and carry out independent research, including field work in developing countries. Candidates are expected to have a high degree of self-motivation, leading their research project with the support of two co-supervisors. Project environment and research Group The successful candidate will join an international team of about 65 professionals in an interdisciplinary work environment, with a broad portfolio of activities and an extensive network of professional contacts to research and government institutions in developing countries as well as the UN system. Approval and Enrolment The scholarships for the PhD degree is subject to academic approval and the candidate will be enrolled in one of the general Ph.D. programmes of DTU. For information about the general requirements for enrolment and the general planning of the scholarship studies, please see the DTU PhD Guide. Assessment The PhD student will be selected through a competitive application process. Online applications will be screened against a set of criteria and a shortlist of candidates will be invited to an interview and to present their project proposals (via skype if based abroad). The assessment process and final selection will be made by the project supervisors. Salary and appointment terms The salary and appointment terms are consistent with the current rules for PhD degree students. The period of employment is 3 years. The place of employment is the Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development of the UNEP DTU Partnership, located at the new UN City in Copenhagen. Further information The project supervisors, James Haselip (jhas@dtu.dk) and Ulrich Elmer Hansen (uleh@dtu.dk) can be contacted directly to answer any specific questions. Candidates may apply prior to obtaining their master's degree, but cannot begin before having received it. The aim is to start the study in January 2016. All interested candidates irrespective of age, gender, race, disability, religion or ethnic background are encouraged to apply. (see also http://www.man.dtu.dk/Om-instituttet/Ledige-stillinger/job?id=dc8baefc-c05f-4aa5-ab00-cebd11209285). |
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Thomas Weblerdirects research at the Energy Trans Lab Archives
September 2019
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