Advertiser's description (via Leiden University's CML Institute of Environmental Sciences):
About the Opportunity
We are seeking a highly motivated researcher to join our team as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Leiden University's CML Institute of Environmental Sciences, to work in the nascent field of actor-level global environmental footprinting. The postholder will help to develop a new global model to study the different roles consumers, farmers and companies play in food system sustainability transitions.
Global food system models lack detail of food system actors and their uneven influence on environmental risks. Microdata on food consumers, producers, and companies offers tremendous potential to pinpoint high-impact actors and distinguish their roles in sustainable food futures. Yet, enriching global food system models with actor-level data remains hindered by technical demands of linking disparate, unaligned, and conflicting information, using methods from macroeconomic, environmental, and nutritional modelling. This project will develop and implement innovative methods to couple food system actor data with macroeconomic models, to assess the socio-environmental impacts of food system transitions from a multi-actor perspective, in individual countries and globally.
Position Responsibilities
You will work in an interdisciplinary setting to integrate models and data from different fields (e.g. food sciences, economics, environmental science, epidemiology). Specifically, you will:
- Further extend an integrated food system model with microdata on consumer diets, farmer practices and food company activities, to better attribute socio-environmental impacts of food systems to individual food system actors.
- Perform several detailed analyses on the environmental and social impacts of global food systems and food system transitions, from a multi-actor perspective.
- Disseminate scientific findings via high-impact scientific publications, international conferences, and policy exchanges.
- Within the project, you will work closely with Ass. Prof. Oliver Taherzadeh and others to develop the methods, data, and analytical frameworks to overcome the limited actor-level detail of global food system sustainability models. Dr. Taherzadeh is dedicated to creating an inclusive and open research environment which nurtures critical scholarship and mentoring of early career researchers from a diversity of backgrounds. In our research group, we strongly value a collaborative approach to problem-driven research in which we help one other thrive. You will be based in Leiden, a vibrant city known for its rich scientific heritage. The role may involve international travel for research to present research findings and collaborate with leading experts in this field
Location
Netherlands