"Postdoctoral Research Associate in Archaeology and Agent-Based Modelling (Job Number: 25001105)"

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the field of agent-based modelling of past societies, working on the Science, Society and Environmental Change in the First Millennium CE (SSE1K) project. The project is funded by the ERC and began in 2023. It is led by Professor Helen Foxhall Forbes at the University of Ca' Foscari in Venice, with collaborators in Basel, Tubingen, and Durham. The postholder will be based in Durham and will report to the Durham project lead, Professor Dan Lawrence. SSE1K explores the environmental and climatic changes that have been identified as causes for societal and political processes and events in the Mediterranean in the first millennium CE, combining historical and archaeological approaches. The central questions of the project are 1. How did humans experience and perceive climatic and environmental fluctuation across the Mediterranean in the first millennium CE, and 2. how did they respond both intellectually and socially to these changing conditions? The postholder will help to answer these questions using agent-based modelling (ABM) of social-ecological systems, drawing on archaeological and historical datasets collated through the project for various regions in the Mediterranean, with a likely focus on Central and Southern Italy. They will have access to the university supercomputing services to support this work. They may also be required to produce maps and perform simple spatial analysis for other members of the project. They will be involved in publications, with opportunities as both a first and co-author, and will also engage in project-related dissemination, administration and other activities.