Doctoral fellowship to study the impacts of biofuels expansion in latin america.

The Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona offers a Doctoral Fellowship to investigate the ecological, economic and social implications of soy cultivation in Paraguay. The position will be based in Barcelona, under the guidance of Dr Esteve Corbera as principal investigator. The fellow will be part of a larger research project entitled ¿A Political Ecology of Land-Use Change: carbon forests and agrofuels¿, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC-2010-07183) and the European Research Agency through a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (GA-2011-294234). The fellow will be employed for 36 months, starting the 1st of January 2012 at the latest, and by the end of this period she/he will have to submit a PhD dissertation under ICTA¿s Doctoral Programme in Environmental Sciences. An additional year of funding may be available subject to the fellow¿s motivation and achieved results. The annual stipend will be of approximately €14,400 and there will be an additional budget for fieldwork. The research will involve at least 12 non-consecutive months of fieldwork in Paraguay, working across governance scales, from national to village levels. The fellow should thus be prepared to live for a long period of time in rural areas with limited access to communication and leisure-related services. The fellow will use research methods from the social sciences for data collection, such as interviews and questionnaires, and will work towards understanding the biophysical and socio-economic effects of soy plantations in selected landscapes and villages. The research will be conducted in collaboration with the Paraguayan NGO Sobrevivencia and counts with the support of the country¿s Environment Ministry. Candidates should have an undergraduate degree in Environmental Sciences, Geography, Biology, Development Studies, Anthropology, Sociology or Political Sciences and an international Masters degree in a related field. They should 1) write and speak fluently in English and Spanish; 2) demonstrate experience in fieldworkbased research, consultancy or development work, preferably in Latin America; and 3) preferably credit some ability of independent thinking and writing through, for example, reports and peer-reviewed publications. We particularly welcome applications from Paraguay and Latin America. Interested candidates should send a full-CV including the name of three referees and a one-page letter of motivation to esteve.corbera@uab.cat before the 09th of October. Phone interviews with pre-selected candidates will take place by the end of October and the selection process will finalise in November.