Wageningen University & Research has a vacancy for PhD Artificial Intelligence for Tracking the Politics of Climate Change Adaptation.
Adapting to the impacts of climate change is necessary and increasingly urgent. Governments across the globe have increasingly formulated high adaptation ambitions to become more climate resilient. In order to understand if these ambitions are implemented in practice, tracking progress on adaptation is of critical importance.
This program aims to develop, theorize, and empirically test the causes and consequences of the politics of adaptation tracking. Adopting a comparative approach, the program investigates the political dynamics around the Global Stocktake under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, the EU Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, and ongoing climate change adaptation developments in several countries from across the globe.
In the program, mixed methods are used, combining traditional methods of expert interviews, observations, and focus group discussions, with machine learning and quantitative text analysis to analyze the politics of adaptation tracking.
Tasks
For this PhD position “Artificial intelligence for tracking the politics of climate change adaptation”, cabdidate will:
- Employ state-of-the-art machine learning tools to develop evidence maps on what is already known about the politics of tracking policy for climate and other sustainability challenges
- Develop and apply natural language processing methods to analyze the politics of tracking adaptation to climate change from a variety of sources (media, policy documents, minutes, speeches, etc.) at national and global levels
- Co-organize and participate in workshops on the politics of adaptation tracking
- Lead the development of 4 scientific publications which form the basis of their PhD dissertation
- Present their work at (inter)national scientific conferences and/or symposia
Salary
A few highlights from their Collective Labour Agreement include:
- The gross salary for the first year is € 2.541,- per month rising to € 3.247,- in the fourth year;
- sabbatical leave, study leave, and partially paid parental leave;
- working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;
- the option to accrue additional compensation/holiday hours by working more, up to 40 hours per week;
- there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;
- a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;
- excellent pension scheme.
Job Requirements
The successful candidate for the AI position for Tracking the Politics of Climate Change Adaptation are meet the following qualifications:
- (Nearly) Completed MSc degree in computational social sciences, computer science, artificial intelligence, or a relevant MSc with a quantitative focus (e.g. political science, public administration, sustainability science)
- Excellent programming skills (R or Python)
- Experience in the use of natural language processing tools (e.g. social network analysis, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, etc.) and working with large volumes of textual data.
- Experience with Deep Learning language models will be a plus.
- Ability to collaborate in an interdisciplinary setting as the team is consisting of qualitative and quantitative scientists from the social and environmental sciences.
- Excellent spoken and written English required for scientific publishing.
Application Process
To apply for PhD AI for Tracking the Politics of Climate Change Adaptation Please enclose the following documents in English:
- a cover letter;
- a full academic curriculum vitae;
- A sample of writing skills (e.g. section of their thesis, individual course assignment, paper).
To apply for PhD AI for Tracking the Politics of Climate Change Adaptation, click here.
Deadline: March 29, 2023.
For more information on PhD AI for Tracking the Politics of Climate Change Adaptation, visit the official site.
