Sozialinnovation Consulting (ISIConsult), Berlin

Das Institut für Sozialinnovation Consulting (ISIConsult) sucht zum 1.2.2018 eine Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin oder einen wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter.

ISIconsult (www.isiconsult.net) ist ein 2014 gegründetes Unternehmen, das im Rahmen des gesellschaftlichen Nachhaltigkeitsdiskurses Forschungs- und Beratungsdienstleistungen anbietet, mit denen gesellschaftlich relevante Innovationen gefördert und realisiert werden. Im Bereich der Forschung werden Potenziale alternativer Praktiken aufgedeckt und Möglichkeiten ihrer Etablierung untersucht und evaluiert. Mit Beratungsleistungen werden Unternehmungen und Organisationen sowie politische Institutionen bei der Entwicklung von Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien und der Implementierung alternativer Praktiken unterstützt. Unsere Themen sind unter anderem die Gestaltung nachhaltiger Transformationsprozesse, Innovation als Veränderung sozialer Strukturen, alternative Konsumformen, gesellschaftliche Teilhabe sowie Partizipation und Vielfalt (Diversity) in Organisationen.
Im Themenbereich nachhaltiger Konsum, Innovationen, Partizipation und Engagement ist ab dem 1. Februar 2018 eine Stelle als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin/ wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
im Umfang von 20 Stunden/Woche, zunächst befristet auf zwei Jahre zu besetzen. Eine längerfristige Anstellung wird angestrebt. Die Vergütung erfolgt entsprechend der Qualifikation und Erfahrungen in Anlehnung an den TV-L Berlin. Schwerpunkt der Tätigkeit: Eigenständige Mitarbeit in Forschungs- und Beratungsprojekten zu Innovationsprozessen, nachhaltigen Konsum und gesellschaftliche Transformation. Mitarbeit in der Projektplanung, Durchführung und Auswertung empirischer Untersuchungen, Verfassen von Publikationen und Projektberichten; Mitarbeit in der Projektakquise. Die Bewerberin/der Bewerber sollte über folgende Voraussetzungen verfügen:
– Abgeschlossenes Diplom- oder Master-Studium der Sozial- oder Geisteswissenschaften. – Einschlägige Expertise in den Themenfeldern Innovationsprozesse, nachhaltiger Konsum und nachhaltige Entwicklung, bürgerschaftliches Engagement und Beteiligung, sozialer Wandel. – Fundierte und nachweisliche Erfahrungen in der Anwendung qualitativer und quantitativer Methoden der Sozialforschung. – Erfahrungen in der Akquise und Durchführung von angewandten Forschungsprojekten, vorzugsweise Erfahrungen im Bereich Politikberatung und Weiterbildung. – Interesse an der Arbeit in einem dynamischen Team, hohe Eigenständigkeit, Eigeninitiative und Belastbarkeit.
Wir bieten ein interessantes Arbeitsumfeld mit wissenschaftlichen Projekten, die sich durch einen hohen Anwendungsbezug und hohe gesellschaftliche Relevanz auszeichnen.
Interessierte werden gebeten, ihre Bewerbung mit den üblichen Unterlagen bis spätestens 22.1.2018 per E-Mail an Dr. René John, rene [dot] john [at] isiconsult [dot] net zu senden.
Vorstellungsgespräche finden voraussichtlich am 29.1.2018 statt.

ISICONSULT Institut für Sozialinnovation Consulting UG (haftungsbeschränkt) Köpenicker Straße 325 (Haus 11, 2.033) 12555 Berlin Tel. +4930 – 6576-4240

10 New PhD Positions, Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E)

Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) offers exceptional graduate students the opportunity to collaborate in enabling a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship

10 New PhD Positions!

Please note the short turnaround required for applying to this position.

Position: The Gund Institute at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington, Vermont and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, seek up to ten PhD students to join the Leadership for the Ecozoic partnership in Fall 2018. The cohort will focus broadly on developing and applying systems-based approaches to ecological economics, law, ethics, and related transdisciplinary efforts to research and chart pathways to the Ecozoic.

Background: The Ecozoic represents a vision for the future founded on mutually enhancing relationships between human societies and the global community of life. Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) is a global partnership initially based at McGill University and the University of Vermont to work toward that vision by: (1) advancing transdisciplinary scholarship in select doctoral programs to educate and empower new leaders for the Ecozoic; (2) co-creating a global research-to-action network to heal and restore Earth’s life support systems and foster a mutually-enhancing human-Earth relationship; and (3) mobilizing and focusing higher education resources and communication on multi-faceted, human-induced, planetary disturbances. A central L4E goal is to enable the development of thought leaders for the Ecozoic era. The partnership builds on the strengths of UVM and McGill in ecological economics and the initial Economics for the Anthropocene (E4A) partnership that currently includes about 40 graduate students, 80 collaborators, and 25 academic, government and NGO partners.

The Ecozoic: “Ecozoic” is a term for an era coined by Thomas Berry, outlining a comprehensive objective of humanity “to assist in establishing a mutually enhancing human presence upon the Earth.” As Berry and Swimme in The Universe Story (p. 251) maintain, “This cannot, obviously, be achieved immediately. But if this is not achieved in some manner or within some acceptable limits the human will continue to exist in a progressively degraded mode of being.” Berry further states in a chapter on “The University” in The Great Work (p. 85), that “universities must decide whether they will continue training persons for temporary survival in the declining Cenozoic Era or whether they will begin educating students for the emerging Ecozoic.” This partnership charts a course for enabling the Ecozoic.

Offer: PhD students at UVM and McGill may receive a 12-month stipend to support their research, the L4E shared coursework, an internship with a partner organization, and other partnership-related work assignments. Tuition support will be available via scholarships and supplementary teaching assistantships. Travel and research funds are also available. Funding is currently pending, but once secured will guarantee 3 years of support.

Qualifications: PhD candidates, accepted by their host university (UVM or McGill).
Application: Interested students should contact one of the following:
McGill University
Peter G. Brown: peter [dot] g [dot] brown [at] mcgill [dot] ca
Applicants must apply to the Department of Natural Resource Sciences in “Renewable Resources” by February 15, 2018.

University of Vermont
Jon Erickson: jon [dot] erickson [at] uvm [dot] edu
Applicants must identify a Fellow from the Gund Institute for Environment as an advisor and apply to the PhD program at UVM by February 1, 2018.

Applications from women and people from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds are encouraged.

Other news from CANSEE

The University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) is hiring a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level with expertise in environment and business. See the call for applications for more information.

Do you want to be a part of CANSEE? We have a number of officer positions that need to be filled. See our volunteer

IFF Social Ecology e-Newsletter Nr. 39 – January 2018

Projects – Publications – Media Resonance – Publication Download – Data Download – Job Announcements

New Publication

Social Ecology. State of the Art and Future Prospects

Kramm, J., Zimmermann, M., Pichler, M. and Schaffartzik, A. (Eds.)

Social Ecology. State of the Art and Future Prospects” Special Issue in Sustainability
MDPI, 2017

Buy this publication

Over the last decades, social ecology has made important contributions to interdisciplinary sustainability studies. Established in the late 1980s, social ecology was developed as a deliberate provocation to the more ‘disciplined’ natural and social science environmental research. With its focus on the specific interrelations between societies and their natural environment (consisting of social and biophysical processes), it has challenged disciplinary assumptions about environmental problems. The particular conceptualization of society-nature interrelations in social ecology yields strong arguments for the necessity of inter- and transdisciplinary analyses of and responses to the ecological crisis which integrate different knowledge types and stakeholder perspectives.While both the hybrid subject matter and the inter- and transdisciplinary approach were highly contested at the beginning, social ecology is now widely accepted within sustainability research and beyond. The contributions to this special issue should take stock of these developments and evaluate major conceptual and empirical achievements and current frontiers of social ecology.Inter- and transdisciplinarity are fundamentally integrated into the social ecology research framework. This integration rests on the development of concepts and methods for the specific purpose of this type of research. Through the transdisciplinary participation of societal actors, socio‑ecological research is faced with both the advantage and challenge of working with heterogeneous knowledge. The concept of regulation and transformation of societal relations to nature as well as the model of social-ecological provisioning systems (SEPS), for example, can be used to specify these interrelations and can be combined with analytical tools such as an ideal model of a transdisciplinary research process and social-ecological lifestyle analysis. A strong focus on the systemic framework within which these society-nature relations can be researched has led to the development of socio-economic metabolism research. The concepts of metabolism and of colonization help to characterize society-nature relations and are complemented by analytical tools such as material flow accounting and the human appropriation of net primary production.The aim of this special issue is not to present one monolithic approach to social ecology but to present the variety in the existing research, to discuss how mutual irritation can be productive and to reflect on how the different conceptual achievements must be understood in light of the current socio‑ecological challenges to which they respond.

Download all 11 chapters:

Gizicki-Neundlinger, M., Güldner, D. and, 2017. Surplus, Scarcity and Soil Fertility in Pre-Industrial Austrian Agriculture—The Sustainability Costs of Inequality. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9020265

Görg, C., Brand, U., Haberl, H., Hummel, D., Jahn, T., Liehr, S., 2017. Challenges for Social-Ecological Transformations: Contributions from Social and Political Ecology. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071045

Haas, W., Andarge, B.H., 2017. More Energy and Less Work, but New Crises: How the Societal Metabolism-Labour Nexus Changes from Agrarian to Industrial Societies. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071041

Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Erb, K.-H., Görg, C., Krausmann, F., 2017. The Material Stock–Flow–Service Nexus: A New Approach for Tackling the Decoupling Conundrum. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071049

Hummel, D., Jahn, T., Keil, F., Liehr, S., Stieß, I., 2017. Social Ecology as Critical, Transdisciplinary Science—Conceptualizing, Analyzing and Shaping Societal Relations to Nature. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071050

Kramm, J., Pichler, M., Schaffartzik, A., Zimmermann, M., 2017. Societal Relations to Nature in Times of Crisis—Social Ecology’s Contributions to Interdisciplinary Sustainability Studies. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071042

Liehr, S., Röhrig, J., Mehring, M., Kluge, T., 2017. How the Social-Ecological Systems Concept Can Guide Transdisciplinary Research and Implementation: Addressing Water Challenges in Central Northern Namibia. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071109

Mehring, M., Zajonz, U., Hummel, D., 2017. Social-Ecological Dynamics of Ecosystem Services: Livelihoods and the Functional Relation between Ecosystem Service Supply and Demand—Evidence from Socotra Archipelago, Yemen and the Sahel Region, West Africa. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071037

Schaffartzik, A., Pichler, M., 2017. Extractive Economies in Material and Political Terms: Broadening the Analytical Scope. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071047

Schleyer, C., Lux, A., Mehring, M., Görg, C., 2017. Ecosystem Services as a Boundary Concept: Arguments from Social Ecology. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071107

Völker, C., Kramm, J., Kerber, H., Schramm, E., Winker, M., Zimmermann, M., 2017. More Than a Potential Hazard—Approaching Risks from a Social-Ecological Perspective. Sustainability 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9071039

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PhD Studenship „GOALPOST“, Newcastle University

Dr. Oliver Heidrich and colleagues have been shortlisted for a PhD studentship for an outstanding PhD candidate to conduct a PhD study entitled: GOALPOST (Global and local supply of nutrients for cities)

To provide nourishment, end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition more sustainable agriculture practices are needed. Modern agriculture may be inadequate for feeding 9 billion people by 2050 because it is dependent upon adding fertilisers to the soil artificially. Key nutrients (N/P/K- Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium) are added as fertilisers to enhance root growth and crop resilience. Whilst N and P can be recovered from waste and wastewaters, Potassium (K) cannot, and it is a finite resource. However mineral based nutrients are vital to meet agricultural demand for growing populations. It is mined around the globe, but primarily in northern latitudes, leading to a high transportation burden to the southern hemisphere, where demand is set to increase and food security is a challenge. All this is not sustainable as more and more minerals must be added to the soil to obtain the same yield (Ciceri et al., 2015). New methods of managing nutrients and resources are needed. These will connect existing institutional frameworks to oversee responsible sourcing of minerals, supply chain management and increase consumer awareness of the effects of increased consumption (Ali et al., 2017). To link social economic issues and physical limitation Oliver and colleagues developed a Multi-Sectoral Systems Analysis (MSA) to determine the Urban Metabolism of London quantifying energy-water-food nexus (Villarroel Walker et al., 2014, Villarroel Walker et al., 2017). This research did focus on the disposal and recovery route but importantly missed the supply chain and mineral nutrients. GOALPOST will apply triangulation methods from analytical tools like Material Flow Accounting to qualitative methods. Providing alternatives fertilisers is changing the supply and disposal chain significantly. Such changes require new business development that can be seen as disruptive innovation to the existing market model which is currently led by a handful of large-scale fertiliser providers. GOALPOST will provide new models, theoretical understandings and interpretations to build new systems that are needed for the multi-local supply and recovery of nutrients. It will advance the research fields of Industrial Ecology, Resource and Business Management by conducting transdisciplinary research: 1) Improve data disaggregation related to the physical information for nutrients from “mine to mouth”; 2) Determine the urban metabolism of cities; 3) Contribute to alternative sourcing of nutrients along the global supply and local consumer chain; 4) Highlight the environmental and social impacts linked to nutrient flows from supply to disposal chain and 5) Investigate disruptive innovation options to the existing market and business models of large-scale fertiliser providers and consumers.
References: Ali et al. 2017. Mineral supply for sustainable development requires resource governance. Nature, 543, 367372. Ciceri et al 2015. Historical and technical developments of potassium resources. Science of the Total Environment, 502, 590-601. Villarroel et al. 2014. The energy-water-food nexus: Strategic analysis of technologies for transforming the urban metabolism. Journal of Environmental Management, 141, 104-115. Villarroel et al 2017. Identifying key technology and policy strategies for sustainable cities: A case study of London. Environmental Development, 21, 1-18
Studentship is for 3 years and pays a Student stipend (tax free) £14,764 per year; Registration fee for UK/EU student £4,800 per year; Travel and consumables £4,000; Total Package worth over £60,000.
Deadline is Monday 29 January 2018 for applications.
More details can be found@ http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sustainability/funding/studentships/ or contact Oliver by email- oliver [dot] heidrich [at] ncl [dot] ac [dot] uk