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ARNALD PUY

University of Birmingham

Home: Skills

ARNALD PUY

Research interests

My work focuses on understanding and appraising uncertainties in contentious phenomena, especially those related with agriculture, climate and water resources. My research aims at providing insights for sustainability and makes use of mathematical models, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, post-normal science and ethics of quantification.

Since 2023 I am the PI of the ERC Consolidator Grant project "DAWN: Illuminating Deep Uncertainties in Irrigation Water Withdrawals", funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 framework. The project will unfold, examine and assimilate the deep uncertainties that condition our understanding of irrigation demands. It has three specific objectives:

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  1. To identify underlying assumptions and path-dependencies in irrigation models.

  2. To recover empirical irrigation knowledge from traditional irrigators and compare it with the scientific knowledge embedded in models.

  3. To merge the scientific and the traditional knowledge on irrigation and explore the resulting uncertainty space with groundbreaking uncertainty and sensitivity analysis tools.

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By merging approaches from hydrology, statistics, philosophy and anthropology, DAWN proposes ground-breaking research to dramatically robustify our comprehension of irrigation withdrawals.

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My detailed CV can be retrieved here.

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ACADEMIC TRAJECTORY

Present and previous posts

September 2022 - to date

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTIES

School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

September 2019 - August 2022

MARIE-SKLODOWSKA CURIE FELLOW (GF)

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department (Levin Lab), Princeton University, USA.

Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway.

PI of the project The Role of Size in the Sustainability of Irrigation Systems (SIZE), funded by the European Commission H2020 framework.

January 2018 - August 2019

RESEARCHER

Centre de Recherches en Archéologie et Patrimoine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

September 2015 - August 2017

MARIE CURIE FELLOW (IEF)

Department of Maritime Civilizations (Sedimentary Archaeology Lab), University of Haifa, Israel.

PI of the project Bloom the Dry: The Creation of Traditional Mediterranean Irrigated Fields (DryIR), funded by the European Commission FP7 framework.

May 2014 - August 2015

HUMBOLDT RESEARCH FELLOW

Department of Geography, University of Cologne, Germany.

PI of the project Bloom the Dry: The Creation of Traditional Mediterranean Irrigated Fields, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

PI of the project Building Up Intensive Labour Areas: Terraces, Irrigation and Agrarian Change in the Ricote Valley (Murcia, Spain) After 711 AD, funded by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

September 2012 - May 2014

Complexity and Socio-Ecological Dynamics (CaSEs), Institut Milà i Fontanals, CSIC Barcelona, Spain

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

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EDUCATION

September 2008 - August 2012

PHD IN STUDIES IN ANTIQUITY AND MIDDLE AGES

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain

Dissertation title: Construction Criteria of Andalusi Irrigated Fields. The Case of Ricote (Murcia, Spain)

Grade: Summa cum laude

UAB Outstanding PhD Award

September 2001 - August 2006

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain

BA IN HISTORY

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Home: List

PUBLICATIONS

Arnald Puy, Michela Massimi, Bruce Lankford, Andrea Saltelli. 2023. Irrigation modelling needs better epistemology. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
doi: 10.1038/s43017-023-00459-0

Andrea Saltelli, Arnald Puy. 2023. What can mathematical modelling contribute to a sociology of quantification? Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 10, 213.
doi: 10.1057/s41599-023-01704-z.

Andrea Saltelli, Marta Kuc-Czarnecka, Samuele Lo Piano, Máté János Llorincz, Magdalena Olczyk, Arnald Puy, Erik Reinert, Stefán Thor Smith, and Jeroen van der Sluijs. 2023. Impact assessment culture in the European Union. Time for something new?.  Environmental Science and Policy 142, 99-111.
doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.02.005.

Monica Di Fiore, Marta Kuc Czarnecka, Samuele Lo Piano, Arnald Puy, and Andrea Saltelli. 2022. The challenge of quantification: an interdisciplinary reading. Minerva 61, 53-70.
doi: 10.1007/s11024-022-09481-w.

Samuele Lo Piano, Razi Sheikholeslami, Arnald Puy, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. Unpacking the modelling process via sensitivity auditing. Futures 144, 103041.
doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2022.103041.

Arnald Puy, Pierfrancesco Beneventano, Simon A. Levin, Samuele Lo Piano, Tommaso Portaluri, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. Models with higher effective dimensions tend to produce more uncertain estimates. Science Advances 8(42), eabn9450.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abn9450

Arnald Puy, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. Discrepancy measures for sensitivity analysis in mathematical modeling.
arXiv: 2206.13470.

Arnald Puy, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. Mind the Hubris: Complexity can Misfire. In A. Saltelli, M. Di Fiore (Eds.). Views on Mathematical  Modelling. Oxford University Press, Oxford (Forthcoming).
arXiv: 2207.12230.

Arnald Puy, Razi Sheikholeslami, Hoshin V. Gupta, Jim W. Hall, Bruce Lankford, Samuele Lo Piano, Jonas Meier, Florian Pappenberger, Amilcare Porporato, Giulia Vico, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. The delusive accuracy of global irrigation water withdrawal estimates. Nature Communications 13, 3183.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30731-8

Samuele Lo Piano, Emanuele Borgonovo, Arnald Puy, Andrea Saltelli, John Walsh, Daniele Bidoni. 2022. Improving the reliability of cohesion policy databases. PLOS ONE 17(4), e0266823.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266823.

Arnald Puy, Bruce Lankford, Jonas Meier, Saskia van der Kooij, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. Large variations in global irrigation withdrawals caused by uncertain irrigation efficiencies. Environmental Research Letters 17(4), 044014.
doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac5768.

Arnald Puy, Samuele Lo Piano, Andrea Saltelli, Simon A. Levin. 2022. sensobol: an R package to compute variance-based sensitivity indices. Journal of Statistical Software 102(5), 1-37.
doi:10.18637/jss.v102.i05

​Arnald Puy, William Becker, Samuele Lo Piano, Andrea Saltelli. 2022. A comprehensive comparison of total-order estimators for global sensitivity analysis. International Journal for Uncertainty Quantification 12(2), 1-18
doi:10.1615/Int.J.UncertaintyQuantification.2021038133

Arnald Puy, Emanuele Borgonovo, Samuele Lo Piano, Simon A. Levin, Andrea Saltelli. 2021. Irrigated areas drive irrigation water withdrawals. Nature Communications 12, 4525.
doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24508-8

Saman Razavi, Anthony Jakeman, Andrea Saltelli, Clémentine Prieur, Bertrand Iooss, Emanuele Borgonovo, Elmar Plischke, Samuele Lo Piano, Takuya Iwanaga, William Becker, Stefano Tarantola, Joseph H.A. Guillaume, John Jakeman, Hoshin Gupta, Nicola Melillo, Giovanni Rabitti, Vincent Chabridon, Quingyun Duan, Xifu Sun, Stefán Smith, Razi Sheikholeslami, Nassim Hosseini, Masoud Asadzadeh, Arnald Puy, Sergei Kucherenko, Holger R. Maier. 2021. The future of sensitivity analysis: an essential discipline for systems modeling and policy support. Environmental Modelling & Software 137, 104954.
doi: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104954

Arnald Puy, Samuele Lo Piano, and Andrea Saltelli. 2021. Is VARS more intuitive and efficient than Sobol' indices?. Environmental Modelling & Software 137, 104960.
doi: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2021.104960 

 

Samuele Lo Piano, Federico Ferretti, Arnald Puy, Daniel Albrecht, and Andrea Saltelli. 2020. Variance-based sensitivity analysis: The quest for better estimators between explorativity and efficiency. Reliability Engineering & System Safety 206, 107300.
doi: 10.1016/j.ress.2020.107300

Arnald Puy, William Becker, Samuele Lo Piano, and Andrea Saltelli. 2020. The battle of total-order sensitivity estimators. arXiv: 2009.01147 
 

Andrea Saltelli, Gabriele Bammer, Isabelle Bruno, Erica Charters, Monica Di Fiore, Emmanuel Didier, Wendy Nelson Espeland, John Kay, Samuele Lo Piano, Deborah Mayo, Roger Pielke Jr, Tommaso Portaluri, Theodore M. Porter, Arnald Puy, Ismael Rafols, Jerome R. Ravetz, Erik Reinert, Daniel Sarewitz, Philip B. Stark, Andrew Stirling, Jeroen van der Sluijs, Paolo Vineis. 2020. Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto. Nature 582.7813, 482–484.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-01812-9

 

Arnald Puy, Samuele Lo Piano, and Andrea Saltelli. 2020. Current models underestimate future irrigated areas. Geophysical Research Letters 47.8.
doi: 10.1029/2020GL087360

 

Arnald Puy, Samuele Lo Piano, and Andrea Saltelli. 2020. A sensitivity analysis of the PAWN sensitivity index. Environmental Modelling & Software 127, 104679.
doi: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104679.

Arnald Puy, Emanuele. Borgonovo, Samuele Lo Piano, and Andrea Saltelli. 2019. Are the results of the groundwater model robust?. 
arXiv: 1912.10814

Arnald Puy, Manuel Herzog, Pedro Escriche, Amou Marouche, Yousef Oubana, and Olaf Bubenzer. 2018. Detection of sand encroachment patterns in desert oases. The case of Erg Chebbi (Morocco). Science of The Total Environment 642, pp. 241- 249. 
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.343.

Arnald Puy. 2018. Irrigated areas grow faster than the population. Ecological Applications 28.6, 1413-1419.
doi: 10.1002/eap.1743.

Andrea L. Balbo, Arnald Puy, Jaume Frigola, Fèlix Retamero, Isabel Cacho, and Helena Kirchner. 2018. Amplified environmental change: Evidence from land-use and climate change in medieval Minorca. Land Degradation & Development 29.4, 1262-1269.
doi:10.1002/ldr.2869

Arnald Puy, Racahata Muneepeerakul, and Andrea L. Balbo. 2017. Size and stochasticity in irrigated social-ecological systems. Scientific Reports 7, 43943.
doi: 10.1038/srep43943.

Arnald Puy, José M. Garcia Avilés, Andrea L. Balbo, Michelle Keller, Svenja Riedesel, Daniel Blum, and Olaf Bubenzer. 2017. Drip irrigation uptake in traditional irrigated fields: The edaphological impact. Journal of Environmental Management 202, 550-561. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.07.017

Andrea L. Balbo and Arnald Puy. 2017. Terrace landscapes. Editorial to the special issue. Journal of Environmental Management 202.3, 495-499.
doi: 10. 1016/j .jenvman.2017.02.001

Andrea L. Balbo, Erik Gomez-Baggethun, Matthieu Salpeteur, Arnald Puy, Steffano Biagetti, and Jurgen Scheffran. 2016. Resilience of small-scale societies: a view from drylands. Ecology and Society 21.2, 53.
doi: 10.5751/ES-08327-210253

Arnald Puy, Andrea. L. Balbo, and Olaf Bubenzer. 2016. Radiocarbon dating of agrarian terraces by means of buried soils. Radiocarbon 58.2, 345-363.
doi: 10.1017/RDC.2015.21.

Arnald Puy, Andrea. L. Balbo, Camilla Zinsli, and Morten Ramstad. 2016. High-resolution stratigraphy of Scandinavian coastal archaeological settlements: the case of Hakonshella, W Norway". Boreas 45.3, 508-520.
doi: 10.1111/bor.12166

Arnald Puy. 2014. Land selection for irrigation in al-Andalus (Spain, 8th century AD). Journal of Field Archaeology 39.1, 84-100.
doi: 10.1179 / 0093469013Z.00000000072

Arnald Puy, Andrea L. Balbo, Antoni Virgili, and Helena Kirchner. 2014. The evolution of Mediterranean wetlands in the first millennium AD: The case of Les Arenes floodplain (Tortosa, NE Spain). Geoderma 232-234, 219-235.
doi: 10.1016/j.geoderma.2014.05.001

Arnald Puy and Andrea L. Balbo. 2013. The genesis of irrigated terraces in al-Andalus. A geoarchaeological perspective on intensive agriculture in semi-arid environments (Ricote, Murcia, Spain). Journal of Arid Environments 89, 45-56.
doi: 10 .1016 / j.jaridenv.2012.10.008

Arnald Puy. 2013. Tracking down the glitter of gold in the Diplomatari de Santes Creus. Imago Temporis - Medium Aevum 7, 175-224.
doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/P6KMG.

Arnald Puy. 2013. The construction of fertility in al-Andalus. Geoarchaeology in Ricote (Murcia, Spain, 8th century AD). Geophysical Research Abstracts 15, 2335.

Arnald Puy. 2012. La huerta de Ricote (Murcia, España) entre los siglos XV y XVIII. Estudiar el pasado: aspectos metodologicos de la investigacion en Ciencias de la Antiguedad y de la Edad Media. Proceedings of the First Postgraduate Conference on Studies of Antiquity and Middle Ages Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona 26-28th October 2010. Ed. by A. Castro Correa, D. Gomez Castro, G. Gonzalez Germain, J. Oller Guzman, A. Puy, R. Riera Vargas, K. Krystyna Starczewska, and N. Villagra Hidalgo. Oxford: BAR International Series 2412, 199-209.
doi: 10.13140/2.1.1883.4887

Ainoa Castro Correa, Daniel Gomez Castro, Gerard Gonzalez Germain, Jordi Oller Guzman, Arnald Puy, Roger Riera Vargas, Katarzyna Krystyna Starczewska, and Nereida Villagra Hidalgo, eds. Estudiar el pasado: aspectos metodologicos de la investigacion en Ciencias de la Antiguedad y de la Edad Media. Proceedings of the First Postgraduate Conference on Studies of Antiquity and Middle Ages Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona 26-28th October 2010. BAR International Series 2412. Oxford.

Arnald Puy. 2010. Moneda, peces de moneda d'or i magnats a Santes Creus. Revista de l'Arxiu Bibliografic de Santes Creus 23, 39-49.

Arnald Puy. 2008. La moneda d'or al diplomatari de Santa Maria de Santes Creus (975-1225). Gaceta Numismatica 169, 39-60.

Home: Job offers

Job offers

DAWN Small orange.png

Positions filled

Four students wanted

The scientific problem

Estimating the volume of water globally allocated to irrigation agriculture is regarded as a key challenge to help address the current water crisis. This has been attempted through ever-detailed global hydrological models with the assumption that more realistic representations will yield more accurate figures. However, after 30 years of research, current estimates of irrigation withdrawals do not seem to converge (Fig. 1). This variability points towards deep uncertainties lurking in our conceptualization of irrigation demands that are impervious to the development of finer-grained models. Without addressing these ambiguities, how do we now which model to trust? Can we be sure that their ranges properly bound the ``true'' value?

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Fig. 1. Uncertainty in irrigation water withdrawal (IWW) estimates (in km3 per year).  a) Uncertainties at the continental level. Each color is a model, data are from 2005. b) Some predictions of global IWW to 2050.

If we do not understand the nature of the uncertainties ingrained in global hydrological models, we risk being misguided by spuriously accurate model estimates and missing on the ``true'' potential impact of irrigation on water resources. This endangers our capacity to manage water and agriculture for a sustainable

living

What will students do?

The students will integrate into a team of international, interdisciplinary researchers with the aim to study how uncertainties are characterized in global hydrological models. This particular investigation will focus on the technical, philosophical and semantic characterization of uncertainties: students will specifically contribute on the semantic part of the investigation. Their job will be to close-read the abstract of approximately 1,000 papers (c. 250 abstracts per student) following the framework of Guillaume et al., and characterize how the results (or claims) of the abstract are framed in terms of:

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  1. Maturity and utility: to what extent can the results be used?

  2. Scope: what limitations exist on how the results can be used?

  3. Level of belief: how certain is the author that the results are true?

  4. Depth of analysis: how thoroughly has the issue ben examined?

  5. Relatability: are the results consistent with previous knowledge?

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Once completed, the students will provide the rest of the team with a report summarizing the methodology and the results obtained. This report will be adapted for publication of a paper in a peer-review journal with the rest of the team.

What will each student get?

  1. Interdisciplinary training on the appraisal of uncertainties in mathematical modeling and scientific research proper.

  2. If needed, training in R programming.

  3. Involvement in the project "DAWN: Illuminating Deep Uncertainties in the Estimation of Irrigation Water Withdrawals, a 2M€ ERC Consolidator Grant project that will run from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, from September 2023 to August 2028.

  4. Training in academic writing and presentation of results in academic journals.

  5. Co-authorship in the resulting paper with the rest of the DAWN team.

  6. A stipend based on 60h of work, band 400, spinal point 30 (11.78 pounds hourly rate of pay) upon submission of the report.

What do we expect from students?

We welcome applications from any student regardless of their disciplinary background and career stage. We are looking for students that are:

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  1. Curious, skeptical, willing to develop interdisciplinary profiles and work in-between the Human and the Natural Sciences.

  2. Able to keep an open mind and think out-of-the-box, especially with regards to controversial issues such as the water crisis or climate change.

  3. Commited to learn and work in a demanding research environment.

Timeline and schedule

Please submit a one-page PDF including your abridged CV and a 250-word reflection on what do you think mathematical models are to Arnald Puy (contact details below) before April 30th 2023. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed during the third and fourth week of May. Interviews will be in person unless there is a case of force majeure. Contracts with the selected students will be signed ideally before the beginning of the summer break, and work will begin on the 1st of September 2023. Students must submit the draft with the results of the bibliographical survey before the 2023 Christmas break.

Contact

Arnald Puy

Associate Professor in Social and Environmental Uncertainties

a.puy@bham.ac.uk

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

University of Birmingham

United Kingdom

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Click here to know more about the University and the city of Birmingham

3-Year PhD Studentship

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Position filled

The philosophical foundations of global irrigation models

Project description

This PhD project will analyze the ontology, epistemology and semantics of the mathematical models designed to calculate a key number: the volume of water globally used for irrigation agriculture. More specifically, the candidate will study the philosophical premises, scientific theories, values and ethical stances that underpin irrigation models, and critically analyze their epistemological foundations from a philosophy of science perspective. A key element will be to distinguish facts from assumptions in the chain of calculations leading to the production of the model-based number, and reflect on the treatment given to concepts such as "validation", "calibration" or "verification". Some other questions that could be of interest include:

 

  1. What is the relation between irrigation models and theory?

  2. What perception of reality underpins the models?

  3. How many different ways of modeling irrigation withdrawals exist, and does this diversity exhaust all possibilities?

  4. Are there opposite ways of modelling irrigation, and if so, what does this entail?

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The precise scope of the project will be finally defined between the successful candidate and the PhD supervisor/s after the candidate has been appointed. The successful candidate will hence be able to shape the PhD project to their specific interests.

Project background

The successful candidate will join the 2M€ ERC Consolidator Grant project "DAWN: Illuminating Deep Uncertainties in the Estimation of Irrigation Water Withdrawals", led by Dr Arnald Puy.  DAWN merges philosophy, anthropology, hydrology and mathematical modeling to explore how ambiguities, vaguenesses and pluralities of perspectives affect our understanding of water use in irrigation. DAWN's proof-of-concept is summarized in the following publications: paper1, paper2, paper3, paper4, or paper5. You can also know more about the project by clicking here and here.

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The candidate will be based at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham. S/he will be supervised by Dr Arnald Puy, by Prof Michela Massimi (University of Edinburgh) and a third scholar from the University of Birmingham.

Project benefits

Besides an exciting and caring interdisciplinary research environment, we also offer:

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  1. A fully funded 3-year PhD studentship that will cover home tuition fees and provide the student with a tax-free stipend according to UKRI rates. We will also cover international fees in case we appoint an international applicant.

  2. A brand new Macbook Pro for the whole duration of the project.

  3. Funding available to cover attendance to congresses, workshops or training courses.

  4. Integration into an interdisciplinary team with a wide international network, with extraordinary opportunities for career development.

  5. The opportunity to apply philosophy of science to have an impact in the management of one of the most pressing societal challenges ahead: ensuring a sustainable use of freshwater resources in our current context of climate change and water scarcity.

  6. An impressive range of benefits to help the student settle and stay at the University, and deal with problems that may affect their learning through professional advice and help. Click here for more details.

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Student profile

  1. We are looking for candidates with a skeptical mind, used to think out-of-the-box and willing to go out of their comfort zones as the PhD project will be interdisciplinary by design.

  2. Applicants should have a good first degree (at least a 2:1 Honours Degree) in a relevant subject. Candidates with Masters in Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Environmental Humanities, Hydrology, Environmental Modelling or cognate disciplines are especially encouraged to apply.

  3. Both UK-based and international students are encouraged to apply.

  4. Programming skills (in R) will also be valued, although training will be provided within the context of the PhD as needed.

How to apply?

Please send the following documents via e-mail to Dr Arnald Puy (a.puy@bham.ac.uk), with "DAWN: PhD studentship application (philosophical foundations of global irrigation models)" in the e-mail subject line]:

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  1. Application form filled out with the required information. You can acces the application form here or directly download it by clicking here.

  2. CV (2 page max) with details on your grades and studies.

  3. Details of two academic referees. Please not that we will not contact your referees for references. You must arrange for references to be submitted by your referees.

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Please apply as soon as possible as we will evaluate applications as they come through. We reserve the right to remove the advert if suitable candidate/s are found before the closing date (29 June 2023). Interviews with shortlisted applicants will take place between the third and fourth week of June. The successful candidate is expected to take up the post in October 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Click here to know more about the University and the city of Birmingham

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3-Year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

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Position filled

The spread of belief systems in irrigation modelling

Fellow profile

We are looking for a highly motivated, curiosity-driven postdoctoral scholar with a strong background in Network Analysis to integrate into the ERC-funded project DAWN. DAWN merges philosophy, anthropology, hydrology and mathematical modeling to unfold, analyze and assimilate the ambiguities ingrained in the modelling of irrigation water demands. Click here and here for further information on the project.

 

The candidate should hold a PhD in Network Analysis, Digital Humanities, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science or a cognate discipline. No specific years of experience as a postdoc are required in order to apply, and we welcome applications from candidates from the UK or abroad. Programming skills in R will be especially valued, although any computer language is welcome.

Specific tasks

The candidate will start in October 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter, and will hold a fixed term contract for three consecutive years. S/he will be based at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham. The main job will consist in applying state-of-the-art network citation analysis to illuminate the epistemological foundations grounding irrigation modelling.

 

The goal is to explore the spread of belief systems through the literature on irrigation modelling. In philosophy of science, belief systems are claims on a given topic that act as pillars upon which scientific knowledge is built. These claims turn to beliefs through citations among the papers supporting the claim. By tracking the pattern of citations we can discern whether these beliefs are grounded on solid data or result from disregarding uncertainties, e.g., from excluding studies that contradicted the given claim.

 

With this approach, the researcher will map the history of irrigation modelling and discover how the knowledge produced (or ignored) by scientists cascaded through time, thus identifying processes of path-dependencies, lock-in effects, the establishment of (false) consensus or the transformation of uncertainties into (fragile) facts.

 

The candidate is also expected to pursue its own research interests within the scope of DAWN and develop an independent scientific profile. Other responsabilities will include:

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  1. Develop research objectives and proposals for own or joint research.

  2. Contribute to writing bids for research funding.

  3. Disseminate research findings for publication, research seminars, etc.

  4. Provide guidance to DAWN PhD students where appropriate.​

Benefits

Besides an exciting and caring interdisciplinary research environment, we also offer:

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  1. A progressive salary at grade 7, spinal point 36. Click here for more details.

  2. Funding available to cover attendance to congresses, workshops or training courses.

  3. Integration into an interdisciplinary team with a wide international network, with extraordinary opportunities for career development.

  4. An impressive range of benefits, including generous annual leave allowance, pension scheme, shopping discounts and more. Click here for more details.

How to apply?

Please send the following documents via e-mail to Arnald Puy (a.puy@bham.ac.uk) with "DAWN: Postdoctoral Fellowship (spread of belief systems in irrigation modelling)" in the e-mail subject line:

 

  1. Covering letter (1 page max) outlining academic interests and reasons for undertaking this project.

  2. CV (5 page max) with details on your track record and publications.

  3. Details of two academic referees. Please not that we will not contact your referees for references. You must arrange for references to be submitted by your referees.

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Please apply as soon as possible as we will evaluate applications as they come through. We reserve the right to remove the advert if a suitable candidate is found before the closing date (30 June 2023). The successful candidate is expected to take up the post in October 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Click here to know more about the University and the city of Birmingham

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The University of Birmingham

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The University of Birmingham (UoB) is a leading, global top 100 university and a member of the elite Russell Group of UK universities. The staff community represents diversity in many respects: over one third of the academic staff are from overseas, around 22% are from BAME backgrounds, and 5% have a declared disability. Diversity is understood as a strength, and UoB aims at providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all members of the University Community. More information about the university can be found here.

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Copyright University of Birmingham

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The city of Birmingham

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The second largest city in the UK and the youngest city in Europe, with c. 40% of its population under the age of 25, Birmingham is one of the best places to live in the UK. A cultural melting pot, it boosts great theatres, museums, the world famous City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, more canals than Venice and outstanding concert and sporting venues.

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Despite its recent growth, Birmingham offers almost everything you would want from a big city while enjoying a relatively moderate cost of living --for instance, housing prices are c. 170% cheaper than in London (and a pint can be 70% cheaper!). The c. 8,000 acres of award-winning green spaces and parks (such as Cannon Hill, Highbury Park or Kings Heath park) makes Birmingham the city with the largest green areas in Europe.

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In 2022, Birmingham has also been hailed as Britain’s ``most exciting food destination'' in the Good Food Guide, highlighting the extraordinary quality of its food scene –from its five restaurants with michelin stars to Balti, curry and several independent cafes, bars and restaurants.

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Photo by Bas van der Horst on Unsplash

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