Apologies for cross-posting
Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh
ESRC-funded Human Geography Research Assistant required: this is a position
for a bright graduate with some research experience and skills in
qualitative methods.
The post is supervised by Professor Susan Smith and Dr Liz Bondi and
requires an interest in housing and urban studies. It is fixed term for one
year and the salary is £15,735.
Closing date: 14th April 1999
Interviews will probably be held on 23rd April 1999
Further particulars below.
For further information please contact Liz Bondi tel. 0131-650-2529, email
[log in to unmask]
Please quote ref 776217
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DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Further Particulars
1. The Department
The Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh emerged from the
last UFC research selectivity exercise with a top rating of 5*, along
with only five other UK geography departments. We have a significant
research programme, buoyant undergraduate single and joint honours
degrees, and flourishing Masters and PhD programmes.
The Department of Geography is part of the Faculty of Science and
Engineering but also maintains formal links with the Faculty of Social
Sciences. It has 30 academic staff, 18 support staff, 331
undergraduates and 86 postgraduates. The department offers single
honours and ordinary degrees in geography together with two
interdisciplinary degrees in Science and Engineering and nine joint
degrees in the social sciences. In line with the Scottish University
system, honours courses are normally of 4 years' duration. Students
study Geography and two other subjects in each of the first two years
and then select options from within the Geography curriculum or, by
arrangement, from other disciplines to complement the core courses in
the honours years. At postgraduate level the department offers an MSc
in Geographical Information Systems, an MRes (Natural Environment) and
the full range of research degrees (MSc by Research, MPhil and PhD),
with support from research councils.
2. The Post
The Research Associate will work on an ESRC-funded project entitled
"The Anatomy of Housing Boom". This involves a study of recent and
rapid changes in the Edinburgh housing market. The project is led by
Dr Liz Bondi and Professor Susan Smith in the Department of Geography,
where the Research Fellow will be based, in collaboration with Dr
Hazel Christie and Professor Moira Munro at the School of Planning and
Housing at Heriot-Watt University.
The research will use primarily qualitative methods. The Research
Fellow will be required to extract and analyse evidence concerning
property transactions, and to arrange and conduct semi-structured
interviews with a sample of house buyers toegther with key
institutional actors including solicitors, estate agents and
surveyors. The Research Fellow will also code and analyse the
interview material collected.
The successful candidate must have a good grounding in methods of
social research. Experience of the conduct, coding and analysis of
semi-structured interviews would be desirable.
3. Research Activities
Staff are currently working on research projects worth approximately
stlg1 million from a variety of funding organisations. There are four
research groupings:
. Governance, Social Provision and Economic Restructuring
Urban change and local politics; gender divisions in urban societies;
racism and gender inequality in urban, housing and social policy;
tourism; heritage and place marketing; the geography of health and
welfare; the spatial restructuring of labour; city marketing;
geography of education; environmental policy.
. The Geography of Identity and Cultural Politics
Political identity and nationalism; the cultural politics of
landscape; the geography of cultural production; Canadian studies;
the cultural and historical geography of Scotland; feminism,
anti-racism, essentialism and geographical theory; history of
geographical ideas and the production of 'native' knowledge; leisure
identities; gender identities in the city.
. Geomorphology and Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction and Modelling
Glacial and polar geomorphology; macrogeomorphology and long-term
land-form development; cosmogenic isotope analysis; tephrochronology;
palaeo-environmental change and reconstruction; tropical soils.
. Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Geographical Information
Science
System analysis; environmental database management; geomatics and
land information systems; parallel computing and GIS performance
analysis; web-based GIS; remote sensing of freshwater systems and
vegetation; modelling of ice sheets and environmental change; acid
deposition modelling; soil-plant relationships and land development
in the humid tropics; environmental policy.
4. Departmental Facilities
The Department offers excellent facilities. It has one of the best
equipped laboratories for Geographical Information Systems in Europe.
This includes an OpenVMS cluster, with a highly integrated network of
UNIX workstations and PCs. Together these systems support a range of
state-of-the-art software including Oracle, Arc/Info, ER-Mapper, ERDAS
Imagine and many others. The computing facilities are connected via
the University's fibre optic network to SuperJANET and the Internet,
as well as to the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) which
runs an array of multiprocessor machines, including a Cray T3E
supercomputer.
The analytical laboratories have facilities for cosmogenic isotope,
soil, pollen, diatom and sediment analysis including thin section
cutting, atomic absorption spectroscopy, X-ray sedigraph together with
cold store and constant temperature rooms. The Department has its own
large map and air photograph library. An extensive collection of
field equipment is also available for sampling the environment,
including electronic distance measurement (EDM) and global positioning
systems (GPS). Facilities are available for digital, analytical and
analogue photogrammetry. Equipment for qualitative research includes
tape recorders, transcribing machines and video players.
The Drummond Library contains most of the more common geographical
journals, textbooks and undergraduate and postgraduate theses. Access
is available to all the University's libraries and Edinburgh is also
home to the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish Record
Office.
5. Terms of Appointment
The appointment will be for one year and will begin as soon as
possible. The salary is stlg15,735.
6. Applications
Applications in writing (3 copies), including curriculum vitae and the
names and addresses of two referees and quoting reference ......,
should be lodged with Personnel Department, University of Edinburgh,
Roxburgh Street, Edinburgh EH8 9TB no later than 14th April, 1999.
For further information about this position please contact Dr Liz
Bondi, Department of Geography, University of Edibnburgh, tel.
0131.650.2529, email: [log in to unmask]
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**********************
Liz Bondi
Department of Geography
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh EH8 9XP
Scotland
UK
tel. 0131-650-2529
fax 0131-650-2524
email [log in to unmask]
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