Job Description
'You will support Dr Chris Pearson (Primary Investigator, PI) and the project team in delivering the Wellcome Trust-funded project `Melting Metropolis: Everyday Histories of Health and Heat in London, New York, and Paris since 1945¿ at the University of Liverpool (UoL). You will play a prominent role in ensuring that project outputs are delivered on time and to a high standard, and to support the team to work effectively together. The project team will consist of the PI, three Co-Investigators (CI), four Postdoctoral Research Associates (PDRAs), a Research Artist, a Community Engagement (CE) Manager, and a PhD student. You will also work with creative freelancers and a CE evaluation consultant.
Heat is already the deadliest type of (un)natural disaster in the United States and has major impacts across New York, Paris, and London. This project interrogates historical attempts to secure physical and emotional health in unequitable sweltering urban environments. Urbanites face overlapping challenges due to seasonal hot weather, rising global temperatures, and the urban heat island effect. Cities are getting hotter. New York¿s climatic zone, once humid continental, has warmed to humid subtropical, a zone formerly confined to the American Gulf and southeast. A temperature rise of 1.5C looks set to raise mortality across the globe (which has already increased 50% in over 65s since 2001) and lead to more cases of dehydration, allergies, and heart and lung complications during high temperatures. These impacts adversely affect old people, ethnic minorities, the clinically vulnerable, and economically-deprived communities.
Given societal concerns about climate breakdown, community and public engagement sits at the heart of Melting Metropolis. The project team will work closely with community groups, and will deliver a creative CE strategy that embodies the principles of community development and participation and interweaves historical research with contemporary concerns. The CE strategy will be developed by the CE Manager, Evaluation Consultant, and Research Artist, and be delivered by the CE Manager and CE artists, supported by the Project Manager.
You will have a degree or equivalent qualification, or relevant professional experience.
This post is available on a fixed term basis until 31 January 2028.
The University has the right to close the vacancy early if it is deemed that there have been enough applications received