Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards in Earthquake-prone & Volcanic Regions
Announcement of Opportunity:
Call for IRNH Fellowships
Closing date: 16:00 on Tuesday 12 February 2013
Interviews will be held on Friday 22 March 2013
The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) wish to appoint two IRNH Knowledge Exchange Fellows for the Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards in Earthquake-prone & Volcanic Regions (IRNH) research programme in 2013 for a period of three years, with the possibility of a further one-year extension.
Applications are welcomed on a part-time basis (between 60% and 80% FTE). Ideally the Fellowships will commence in April/May 2013.
Under this call up to £550k of NERC and ESRC funding is available, and the IRNH research programme aims to support two fellowships within that budget.
Two consortia have been funded, for £3m (100% FEC) each, to focus on:
- earthquake hazard, resilience, vulnerability and related hazards; and
- volcanic hazard, resilience, vulnerability, and related hazards.
Both consortia are aiming to improve assessment of the primary hazard and related hazards. In collaboration with stakeholders, both aim to improve multi-hazard risk analysis, risk mitigation and understanding of uncertainties, and the communication of reliable knowledge of these hazards in order to strengthen resilience.
These consortium projects started in the summer of 2012 and are funded for five years. Further details are available from Grants on the Web and in the Announcement of Opportunity document below.
£150k was also previously allocated to fund six IRNH scoping studies to build capacity and whose findings are available on the IRNH resources page.
The objectives of the IRNH Fellowships will be as follows:
- To contribute to delivering NERC's strategic goal of enhancing UK leadership in the science of natural hazards and ESRC's strategic goal of influencing behaviour and informing interventions.
- To facilitate the communication and application of the science delivered from the IRNH research programme in core disciplines and in wider disciplines such as health and engineering, to a variety of users and stakeholders, including policymakers, government agencies, humanitarian agencies, industry and commerce, both nationally and internationally.
- To feedback to the project investigators where the science can have the greatest impact and foster inter-disciplinary working in the priority areas, both nationally and internationally.
- To use volcanoes and earthquakes as the lens through which to focus lessons for research on a wider range of natural hazards, linking and drawing upon the common areas of the two research consortia in this programme.
- To work together to enable information sharing and communication across and between the consortia to strengthen and support the interdisciplinary nature of the research and to ensure that they are able to share best practice in areas such as data integration, methodology and policy linkage.
- To provide the link to an associated NERC umbrella research programme: Probability Uncertainty & Risk in the Environment (PURE).
Applications to this call are invited from members of the NERC, ESRC, or related, communities at all stages of their careers, who must have an appreciation of social science analytical techniques and approaches. Applicants must be resident in the UK and employed by an eligible UK Research Organisation 
.
Potential applicants should refer to the Announcement of Opportunity document below for full details and are also strongly advised to read the Guidance For Applicants document before beginning an application.
Announcement of Opportunity (250KB)
Guidance for Applicants (151KB)
The closing date for proposals is 16:00 on Tuesday 12 February 2013.
For further information about this announcement of opportunity please contact:
Lynne Porter
Tel: 01793 411791
Lesley Aspinall
Tel: 01793 411536