PhD Position Announcements
Demography and Geography
Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pennsylvania
Application deadline: 10 December 2021
For more information, go to:
https://theedenresearch.org/polaris
For questions, contact:
Guangqing Chi
Email: gchi [at] psu.edu
Phone: 814-308-3883
Penn State’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education and Department of Geography seek two PhD-level graduate research assistants to join their large transdisciplinary POLARIS team. These positions will be located in State College, Pennsylvania.
POLARIS, or Pursuing Opportunities for Long-term Artic Resilience for Infrastructure and Society, is a National Science Foundation-funded project that studies environmental migration, food security, and human-environment conflicts in coastal Arctic Indigenous communities and identifies the important assets (social, environmental, infrastructural, institutional) to help them adapt and become more resilient to climate-related changes.
One position will be in the Rural Sociology graduate program. This student will have an opportunity to pursue a dual-title degree in Demography. This student should have a strong research interest in rural sociology, demography, population and environment, community resilience, and/or climate change in Indigenous communities. Competence in rigorous statistical and spatial analysis is preferred.
The other position will be in the Geography graduate program. This student will have an opportunity to examine the impact of environmental change on local people and their food systems. The student may have an opportunity to pursue a dual-title degree in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment. A strong grounding in Indigenous food systems and food environment assessment is preferred.
The students will be members of a large interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research team. The students will participate in research activities of the POLARIS project and conduct field data collection in coastal Alaskan Indigenous communities.
The students are expected to develop their dissertation research based on the POLARIS project. The ideal candidates will have extensive experience working with Native/Indigenous communities or belong to a Native/Indigenous community themselves. A strong interest working with Native/Indigenous communities is a must. The students will join several other graduate students at Penn State’s graduate programs in Rural Sociology, Geography, and Ecology, as well as graduate students from Michigan Tech and University of Alaska, as part of the project team. The student should be self-motivated, open to learning new methods, resourceful, and independent.
Instructions for applying to these PhD and dual-title degree programs:
For more information about the POLARIS project and the positions, contact Dr. Guangqing Chi (gchi [at] psu.edu), Dr. Heather Randell (hrandell [at] psu.edu), and/or Dr. Bronwen Powell (bxp15 [at] psu.edu).
Application deadline: 10 December 2021
For more information, go to:
https://theedenresearch.org/polaris