Job Description
Grade UE07: £40,497 to £48,149 per annum
School of GeoSciences / CSE
Full time: 35 hours per week
Fixed term: for 2 years
The Opportunity: Postdoctoral Research Associate in the first Phanerozoic mass extinction
This post is full-time (35 hours per week); however, we are open to considering flexible working patterns. We are also open to considering requests for hybrid working (on a non-contractual basis) that combines a mix of remote and regular on-campus working.
We seek a 2-year (24 month) postdoctoral research associate to join the research team on the NERC Pushing the Frontiers project "Determining the nature and drivers of Earth's first metazoan radiation and subsequent extinction: The Cambrian 'Explosion' and Sinsk Event". The overall aim of the project is to understand the drivers and evolutionary consequences of the first mass extinction of the Phanerozoic, the enigmatic Cambrian Sinsk Event, 514 million years ago.
The work will require the creation and interrogation of an integrated age model, and stratigraphic dataset of sedimentology, redox and isotope geochemistry, and palaeobiology in order to resolve the causes and effects of the SINSK mass extinction, via a highly integrated, multi-disciplinary programme of novel analyses and modelling using new, global and regional, data.
Your skills and attributes for success:
1. Track record in Ediacaran-Cambrian research
2. Knowledge of redox geochemistry and palaeobiology
3. Independent, creative researcher
Application Information
Please ensure you include the following documents in your application:
1. CV
2. Cover letter, outlining your motivation for application
As a valued member of our team you can expect:
1. A positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work.
2. To be part of a diverse and vibrant research international community
3. Comprehensive Staff Benefits, such as a generous holiday entitlement, competitive pension schemes, staff discounts, and family-friendly initiatives.
Championing equality, diversity and inclusion
The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.
Prior to any employment commencing with the University you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. The University is able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. If successful, an international applicant requiring sponsorship to work in the UK will need to satisfy the UK Home Office's English Language requirements and apply for and secure a Skilled Worker Visa.
Key dates to note
The closing date for applications is April 18th 2025.
Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone.
Interviews will be held in May/June 2025.
About Us
As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow's greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.
About the Team
The School of GeoSciences explores the factors and forces that shape our world. The School aims to understand the world through fundamental curiosity-driven research and to support prescient decision-making at individual to global scales. We undertake world-leading research; offer new ways of understanding natural and social drivers of change; provide inter-and trans-disciplinary solutions; and work in partnership to improve livelihoods and explore ways to manage the environment that are both sustainable and socially equitable.
With over 500 academics, researchers and research students, we are the largest and most successful interdisciplinary grouping of geoscientists and geographers in the UK. Research activity is coordinated within three main Research Institutes - Global Change, Earth and Planetary Science, and Geography and the Lived Environment - and within smaller research groupings that reach across and beyond the School.
A distinctive feature of the School is the combination of academic strength, intellectual breadth and societal relevance. Our interdisciplinary research and teaching builds on established core disciplines (ecology, environmental sciences, geography, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography) to provide a variety of approaches to understanding the world (including, for example, system-scale modelling, process studies and the development of urban and social theory). The School's research covers fundamental 'blue-skies' questions, as well as having application to key societal challenges including inequality and vulnerability; urban precarity; nature and cultural meaning; development and sustainability; climate and environmental change; energy, food and water security; health and wellbeing; natural resources; and natural hazards.
The School holds a Bronze Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to gender equality in higher education. Our aim is to recognise and value diversity in our staff and students, and to support flexible and family-friendly working.
More details about the School is available from http://www.ed.ac.uk/geosciences #J-18808-Ljbffr