McGill School of Environment, at McGill University in Montreal, is seeking to hire new professors in urban ecology and sustainability and ecological/environmental economics. The positions are joint appointments with the departments of Geography and Natural Resource Sciences, respectively. For more information see the MSE’s website:
Urban Ecology/Sustainability
Urbanization is one of the primary processes responsible for global transformation of ecosystems and landscapes. Over half of the world’s inhabitants now live in cities and the environmental footprint of urban areas extends well beyond the physical fraction of the Earth’s surface they occupy. Cities themselves are complex ecosystems: they have inorganic and organic components; they provide habitat for distinct assemblages of species; they consume and transform energy and resources; they generate waste; and they are intricately connected to natural systems. At the same time, urbanization removes inhabitants from the immediate experience of supporting ecological systems making the concept of sustainability more virtual than visceral. As cities expand, their populations increasingly dwell in locations vulnerable to changes in the global environment and urban-based producers and consumers account overwhelmingly for the world’s fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. A grand challenge of our times is to build knowledge of how urban places can be transformed to support human development in ways that sustain bio-physical environments, knowledge that is of critical importance given the current trajectory of global climate change.
The person who fills this position will conduct research that contributes to our understanding of how complex urban systems respond to, and in turn drive, environmental perturbations across scales from the local to global. The person would have expertise in ecology and sustainability, and in innovative approaches to achieving a sustainable interface between the urban setting and the non-urban environment.
This position will provide an important addition for undergraduate and graduate programs offered by the School of Environment (http://www.mcgill.ca/mse/) <http://www.mcgill.ca/mse> and the Department of Geography (http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/) <http://www.geog.mcgill.ca>, and has the potential to contribute to programs in Sustainability Science and Urban Systems. There would also be potential interactions with other Departments with interests in the environment, such as Biology, Natural Resource Sciences, and the School of Urban Planning.
Applied Environmental / Ecological Economics
The successful candidate will build an internationally recognized scholarly research and teaching program in the field of applied environmental / ecological economics. We are particularly interested in an individual who works on significant environmental challenges facing society, who can inform policy and regulation, and who has a broad knowledge of economic institutions and environmental policy, especially with reference to agricultural and natural resource conservation, along with a thorough understanding of steady-state and ecological economics.
We seek someone whose research addresses questions such as: What are the impacts of market design and legal and policy frameworks on ecological management? Can markets be designed to encourage effective and equitable ecological management, and if so, how? If not, what alternative policies might allow the economy to find itself again in balance with the biosphere? What are the appropriate ways to integrate ecological values into policy analysis and decision making? What are the economic costs and benefits of environmental changes, such as changes in climate, nutrient pollution, the use of GMO crops, the emergence of disease, and the spread of invasive species? How can policy responses be prioritized in the face of the growing imbalance between economic and ecological cycles? How might individual and collective processes for decision-making be better designed so that economy and biosphere are integrated?
The successful candidate will be required to teach within the Agricultural Economics program, and to bring the perspective of ecological economics to the core program of the McGill School of Environment. A commitment to high quality undergraduate and graduate teaching and advising in the Agricultural Economics Program and the McGill School of the Environment and a willingness to contribute to strengthening graduate programs are expected.