The Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University invites applications for a 2-year postdoc position in the interdisciplinary Danish National Research Foundation Niels Bohr research project AURA (Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene;http://anthropocene.au.dk/).
The AURA project is focused on human-biodiversity coexistence within the Anthropocene, a new geologic epoch, characterized by massive human disturbance of Earths ecosystems. The scale of human disturbance has created unprecedented new crises: a wave of species extinctions, the global spread of emergent pests and diseases, and rapid and unpredictable climate change. New approaches are required to consider these Anthropocene dilemmas. At the heart of this issue is the problem of unintentional design of anthropogenic, i.e. human-disturbed, landscapes. Human projects do not always result in the landscapes which we intended. Climate change is one example of unintentional design; globalization and the resulting exotic species invasions are another. As these examples suggest, we tend to imagine unintentional design as a danger to biodiversity and even human survival. But what if anthropogenic landscapes and their novel ecosystems were sometimes also sites of new designs for biodiversity? Addressing this crucial issue the AURA project investigates the ways that humans and other species live together in anthropogenic landscapes. For this position, AURA invites candidates to provide research proposals on the topic of A wild Anthropocene the potential for wild ecosystems in human-dominated landscapes, with a focus on the realized and potential role of phenomena and approaches such as novel ecosystems, open-ended ecological restoration, unmanagement, and megafauna-based rewilding, as well as indigenous and vernacular management and restoration in promoting human-biodiversity coexistence in the Anthropocene via Natures own processes. Methods-wise there are no strict limits - there can be field components, including ethnography, ecology, and environmental history, and/or be macroecological or otherwise informatics-based, or be theoretical. Key selection criteria for the position will be the quality, innovativeness and feasibility of the proposal as well as the quality of the candidate. The selected proposal will then form the basis for further joint development between the postdoc and other involved AURA members. AURA offers a truly interdisciplinary, highly international, and collaborative research setting. AURA is led by Niels Bohr professor and anthropologist Anna Tsing, Aarhus University and University of California Santa Cruz and has a mix of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers from the Departments of Culture and Society (Arts) and Bioscience (Science & Technology) at Aarhus University as its additional core members. The supervisors for this postdoc will be professor Jens-Christian Svenning and professor Anna Tsing, while other AURA members will be involved as relevant. The postdoc will be employed in the Ecoinformatics & Biodiversity Group, Dept. Bioscience, Aarhus, but will have joint work places at the two departments. Postdoc candidates are expected to have a solid background in either ecology or environmental anthropology, strong interdisciplinary interests and collaborative skills, proven abilities to publish at a high international level, as well as top-level proficiency in speaking and writing English. Starting date (preferred): Early to mid 2014.
