Postdoctoral Research Associate in Agent-based Modelling and Data Analysis.
University of Cambridge - McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
Vacancy Reference No: Salary: £31,604 - £38,833
Limit of tenure applies*
One full time Postdoctoral Research Associate is sought to work on a European Research Council funded project entitled:
Winter Rain, Summer Rain: Adaptation, Climate Change, Resilience and the Indus Civilisation (TwoRains)TwoRains is a five year research project led by Dr Cameron Petrie that is investigating the resilience and sustainability of South Asia’s first complex society, the Indus Civilisation (c.2500-1900 BC), which developed across a range of distinctive environmental contexts where westerly winter rainfall overlapped with the summer rainfall of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM). The project is combining cutting edge approaches from Archaeology, Earth Sciences and Geography to reconstruct climate, model rain patterns, and explore societal adaptations and responses to change by combining data on settlement distribution, food production and consumption, and water stress. The data will be integrated and assessed using agent-based modelling.
TwoRains is pursuing a series of specific objectives through four interrelated work-packages, focussing on: climate (WP1), environmental and settlement landscapes (WP2), water stress and life-ways (WP3), and modelling strategies of adaptation and resilience (WP4). By adopting an integrated interdisciplinary approach, TwoRains is asking “Does climate change really cause collapse?”, elucidating how particular communities perceived weather and landscape changes, hypothesising about why they made the decisions they did, and exploring the consequences of those decisions.
The successful applicant for the position of Postdoctoral Research Associate in Agent-based Modelling and Data Analysis will carry out agent-based modelling to explore human adaptation to the variable landscapes of NW India, the types of possible human responses to an event of abrupt climate change, and the resilience and sustainability of particular decisions. This will involve the synthesising of the results of all of the project datasets collected as part of WPs 1-3. This role will require previous experience with agent-based model building and data analysis.
Applicants should have, or must be expecting to complete, a Ph.D. in Archaeology or a related field before they take up this position. Research experience in agent-based modelling and analysis is essential, and experience with computational methods, statistics, geographical information systems and coding is essential. Some knowledge of South Asian archaeology is desirable, but not essential.
Start date – 1 September 2018. The position is funded for 2 years.