"Global Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow"

The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to join their team. Reporting to Richard Norton, professor of urban and regional planning and Global Center co-principal investigator, you will work with researchers at the University of Michigan and allied universities through the Global Center, working primarily with the Climate Ready Communities and Transboundary Governance research cluster while collaborating across the Center's other two research clusters-Hydro-Climate and Ecosystem and Water Quality Monitoring. You will be expected to conduct research on coastal community resilience within the Great Lakes Basin and other selected transboundary waters.

The Global Center is administered by the School for Environment and Sustainability at UM with funding from the National Science Foundation. Its mission is to lead innovative research to understand and generate resilience to water-related challenges in transboundary regions, emphasizing interdisciplinary research and especially the integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge with classical western science through the cultivation of mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous communities.

The primary focus of the fellowship will revolve around comparative analysis of the planning, policy, legal, and other institutional arrangements that shape local coastal and riverine community resilience efforts across state, national, and tribal settings, with specific research topics and study sites to be determined collaboratively by the postdoctoral fellow and Global Center researchers.

This is a full-time, one-year, term-limited position with an anticipated start date of late spring or early summer of 2026, but no later than the early fall of 2026. There is a possibility of extension for a second year, subject to organizational needs, secured funding, and performance.

The research fellow will be expected to:

• Conduct literature reviews on relevant topics related to institutional arrangements, community resilience, and collaborative interdisciplinary research generally and on transboundary waters specifically;
• Develop research questions, research designs, and appropriate methods for conducting empirical investigations related to community resilience and transboundary waters;
• Develop, administer, and analyze results from surveys and interviews of public officials;
• Develop, administer, and analyze results from content assessments of relevant public documents;
• Conduct spatial analyses of landscape development patterns and their relationships to public plans and policies;
• Coordinate and collaborate regularly with Global Center researchers; and
• Prepare research reports and peer-reviewed academic publications presenting research findings.

Qualifications include:

• A Ph.D. in urban and regional planning or a related field, with demonstrated expertise in some aspect of community policy and planning for coastal and/or riverine community resilience, awarded within the past three years or no later than the start of the appointment date;
• Demonstrated expertise in empirical social science field investigation;
• Demonstrated working knowledge of geophysical and/or ecological processes related to climate change, water, coastal/riverine dynamics, and associated hazards;
• Demonstrated strong writing and oral communication skills;
• Demonstrated ability to lead the development of manuscripts for publication; and
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a collaborative, multi-disciplinary research team.

The salary range for this position is $60,000 - $68,000. Applicants should submit one PDF containing: Curriculum Vitae, Statement of Interest, Link to a sample publication, and Names of 3 references.

Taubman College of Architecture and Urban PlanningGlobal Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters