Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Ethnography and River Biographies amid climate change

About this position

The position

A Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at the interdisciplinary ERC research project RiverPulse is available at the

Department of Language and Culture

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Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education

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About the project RiverPulse:

Reconfiguring human–nature interactions as an assemblage at the Arctic frontline of climate change is an ERC Advanced Grant project at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway. It examines how accelerating climate change transforms Arctic salmon rivers as ecological systems, multispecies environments, lived places and sites of governance. The broader aim is to advance assemblage thinking as an empirically grounded framework for understanding climate change as a crisis of relations and Arctic salmon rivers as assemblages of ecological, social, cultural and political processes.

The project works across three river regions: Reisa in Norway, Tornio in Finland and Sweden, and Kapisillit in Greenland. The communities are multilingual and -cultural, including Sámi and Kalaallit Indigenous communities and Kven and Meänkieli minority contexts. RiverPulse combines ecological and quantitative research with ethnographic, historical, citizen-science and governance approaches to understand how climate-driven changes in rivers and salmon systems reconfigure river–salmon–human relations, knowledge and governance.

RiverPulse is designed as an interdisciplinary research programme, where the announecd postdoctoral research fellow position is one of four positions. Ecological and quantitative evidence will be interpreted alongside qualitative and community-based knowledge, while each researcher retains clear scholarly responsibility for their own area. You will join a team spanning the humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences, with interdisciplinary collaborators and local research assistants across the three river regions.

The position is a fixed term position for a duration of 3

years. It is a prerequisite that the applicant can carry out the project over the full course of the employment period. No person may hold more than one fixed term position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the same institution.

The Department has a very active and diverse research profile, and hosts about 140 employees the majority of which are situated at the Tromsø campus, but some are at the Alta campus. There are about 500 students at the department.

As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, you will have the opportunity to advance your scientific career and further qualify for academic positions. If you do not already have the educational competence that meets the requirements for an Associate Professor position in Norway, UiT will arrange such competence during the employment period.

The workplace is at UiT in Tromsø, and some travel should be expected in the role

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You must be able to start in the position by the 1st of April 2027.

The project/position's field of research

We are recruiting four postdoctoral research fellows with complementary expertise. Each position has its own research question and responsibilities, while all four fellows will contribute to the interdisciplinary work of RiverPulse across ecological, social, cultural and political processes. Previous Arctic or northern research experience is an advantage, but it is not generally required.

We welcome applications from candidates who can explain how their expertise can contribute to RiverPulse. You are not expected to arrive as an expert in every method or discipline used in the project.

In addition to their position-specific research responsibilities (please see below), all postdoctoral fellows will contribute to shared RiverPulse activities, including project meetings, workshops and events, research communication and dissemination, and other project-related activities. In addition, the position involves periods of extended fieldwork in one or several of our research sites.

You must submit a preliminary research plan of maximum 3 pages, excluding references. Please outline how you would develop your research within the wider RiverPulse project. The plan should identify the questions you would pursue, the material and methods you would draw on, and conceptual approach you envisage.

It should explain how your research connects with the relevant RiverPulse position and with the project as a whole, what you would contribute independently, and where you see the most important opportunities for collaboration across disciplines and river regions. Where relevant, please address fieldwork, community engagement and ethical considerations.

The 3-page research plan is not expected to be a fully independent project proposal. We want to see how you formulate a coherent line of research of your own within an already defined ERC project, and how you would make use of the opportunities for collaboration that RiverPulse provides.

Your role

You will contribute expertise in environmental ethnography and biographical research. Your research will focus primarily on one RiverPulse river, while also contributing to comparative work across all three river regions. The position examines how environmental change and changing river relations are negotiated, contested, remembered and narrated over time, and how historical, colonial and political-economic processes shape river communities, practices and understandings amid climate change.

The position will address the following research question:

How are environmental changes negotiated, contested, remembered and narrated over time in the Arctic Salmon river communities?

Duties of the position

Conduct ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and historical research in one RiverPulse river region.

Work with ethnographic, narrative, oral-historical and archival materials to develop a longitudinal river biography that traces environmental change and the historical, colonial and political-economic processes through which river relations have been configured.

Analys