Research Fellow

About the job:

Fortran is one of the oldest programming languages still in active use today, having been first developed 70 years ago. Despite its age, it continues to contribute, and in some cases is indispensable, to many international science and engineering projects and products, such as climate change modelling. The FortranFuture NetworkPlus project is a three-year EPSRC-funded project that seeks to answer the high-level question: How do we sustain sciences, and engineering disciplines, currently dependent on Fortran so that they continue to advance knowledge - and contribute to society, the economy and the environment - for the next 70 years? Initially at least, FortranFuture takes a neutral position on this question, intentionally not presupposing an answer. Whatever the way forward for sciences currently dependent on Fortran - e.g., to invest in or divest of Fortran - there is the critical need to develop a strong international community in this area, to ensure that non-technical issues and challenges are sufficiently well understood, and to ensure appropriate tooling and other resources (including education and training) are available. Thus, there is the vital need to engage with complex sociopolitical expectations and constraints.

FortranFuture is an interdisciplinary collaboration between software engineering and social science researchers at Queen's University Belfast and University of Southampton. The project has (currently) 25+ institutional partners (in the UK and internationally) and, separately, a community of practice of 75+ practitioners, including research software engineers, computational scientists and other stakeholders and policy makers. FortranFuture will strengthen the existing community of practice, establish an interdisciplinary research network, undertake qualitative research (and potentially also quantitative research) to understand the communities' needs and priorities, and develop a roadmap for the future of Fortran based science. To support this activity and outputs, FortranFuture has flexible funding to fund small/er investigative projects undertaking by practitioners and researchers that will complement the work of the Research Fellow and the core investigative team.

We anticipate the role will involve some hybrid working. The start date for this post will be 1 September 2026 (or after).

About the person

The successful candidate must have, and your application should clearly demonstrate that you meet the following essential criteria:

Normally have or be about to obtain a relevant PhD. In a research area that supports the interdisciplinary and sociotechnical aspects of the project, for example: in a social science discipline such as digital sociology or anthropology, socio-technical studies, information systems, systems thinking, or in a technical discipline with socio-technical dimensions such as Computer Supported Cooperative work and Human Computer Interaction, software sustainability and computational sciences. Significant relevant research experience to include: Experience in research design and the use of qualitative research methods to collect data (for example interviews, focus groups, observation and ethnography) and analyse data (for example NVivo and other CAQDAS tools. To be successful at shortlisting stage, please ensure you clearly evidence in your application how you meet the essential and, where applicable, desirable criteria listed in the Candidate Information document on our website.