11 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stockholm University, Sweden

The postdoctoral position is located at the Department of Philosophy and is tied to the Stockholm Center on Global Governance (SCGG). SCGG is a center of excellence at Stockholm University, which is funded by the Swedish Research Council and which promotes interdisciplinary research about global governance. The center also offers teaching and societal engagement on the topic of global governance. The postdoc will be part of a group of four postdocs with different disciplinary backgrounds joining the center.
The postdoc will contribute to the center’s research environment and proactively participate in the center activities. This includes lectures, workshops, and conferences, and the organization of seminars.

The successful candidate will primarily work on two projects. The first project explores dynamic behavior of quantum matter, quantum information systems (Q bits, sensors), quantum light matter interactions and entangled and hidden quantum orders. The second project explores computational modeling and materials informatics search for novel quantum states in materials using ab initio and machine learning techniques. For ongoing research please visit group page: tqmatter.org.

The postdoctoral postion will be part of the 4-year research project “Rising to the Challenge of the Climate Transition: EU’s Leadership in a Just and Effective Transformation towards Climate Neutrality amidst Turbulence, Crises, and Political Conflicts”, funded by the Swedish Research Council on Sustainable Development (FORMAS). Aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the European Union’s (EU) implementation of the European Green Deal, the ‘Fit for 55’ package and the 2040 climate targets is complicated by turbulence compounded by multiple crises, such as Russia’s war against Ukraine, the energy crisis and the economic recession. This project examines the efforts by the EU and selected Member states to accelerate the transformation toward a climate-neutral society through a theoretical framework on the interaction between turbulence and policy change and a mixed methods design (document analysis, interviews, surveys).

The aim of the project is to examine how the implementation of the EU’s climate and energy legislation affect its ability to achieve an effective and just climate transition under conditions of crises. By examining (1) the effectiveness of the Fit for 55 package and EU’s prospects to achieve its mid-term and long-term targets and secure a global leadership: (2) the political conflicts and implementation challenges, and (3) the implications for a just transition, this project contributes to the understanding of the politics and policy of EU’s climate transition.

The project will provide policy-relevant knowledge and recommendations on how to make EU’s decarbonization and green transition more effective, just and legitimate. The project is led by Karin Bäckstrand at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University. Other project consortium members are Sebastian Oberthür at the Brussels School of Governance at Vrije University Brussels and Charles Parker at the Department of Political Science at Uppsala University.

The postdoctoral postion will be part of the 4-year research project “Achieving High Integrity Voluntary Climate Action” (ACHIEVE), funded by the European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE Research Innovation Program and led by Radboud University in the Netherlands. An unprecedented number of voluntary climate commitments have been made by a wide array of non-state and subnational actors. Together, these actions can contribute significantly to the achievement of the Paris Climate Agreement.Yet, non-state and local actors’ environmental claims are often unsubstantiated. Integrity is therefore key to realizing the promise of voluntary climate action by many actors, and to actually prevent and combat climate change. The ACHIEVE research project will identify opportunities to strengthen and scale up voluntary climate action, with the aim of achieving a worldwide net-zero society by 2050.

At the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University, Karin Bäckstrand is coordinating a work package on governance and regulation of non-state climate committemtns within the ACHIEVE project, which will investifate: (1) whether and how national regulations and policies affect the emergence and effectiveness of high-integrity voluntary climate action by non-state actors in selected countries; (2) the extent to which high integrity principles are promoted among memberships of voluntary climate action platforms and initiatives in the selected countries; and (3) whether and how high integrity voluntary climate action by non-state actors support effective regulations at the national and EU levels.

Mixed methods will be employed in the project for instance: (1) tracking and assessing national regulations and policies; (2) an expert survey targeting members of voluntary climate action to map perceptions among representatives of business, cities, NGOs, trade unions, etc; (3) comparative case studies and employing methods of process tracing, and semi-structured interviews with key leading members of the selected national climate action platforms as well as government officials.

The postdoctoral position is located at the Department of Law and is tied to the Stockholm Center on Global Governance (SCGG). SCGG is a center of excellence at Stockholm University, which is funded by the Swedish Research Council and which promotes interdisciplinary research about global governance. The center also offers teaching and societal engagement on the topic of global governance. The postdoctor will be part of a group of five postdoctors with different disciplinary backgrounds joining the center.

To further broaden our research profile, the Contaminant Chemistry Unit within the Department of Environmental Science is recruiting a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with an open research focus. We invite young scientists interested in a postdoctoral position to submit proposals for a 2-year research project. The project should build on/complement the existing strengths in the Department of Environmental Science while introducing new research questions or methods. The Contaminant Chemistry Unit currently consists of 6 research groups (Benskin, Cousins, MacLeod, McLachlan, Posselt, and Sobek). Our research programs examine the occurrence and behavior of pollutants in the environment and in the technosphere. Areas of particular interest include the discovery of new contaminants, understanding the physical, chemical, and biological pathways that contaminants follow, and the development of novel tools and techniques for sampling and analysis. We strive to synthesize our scientific understanding about the sources, transport, transformation, bioaccumulation of environmental contaminants into mathematical models that inspire new scientific hypotheses and support environmental decision-making.

The position will be part of the project TRANSMOD – “Building models of, with and for sustainability transformations” funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). The project studies governance and food system transformations in the Global North and South to investigate how transformative change towards more sustainable social-ecological systems (SES) emerges (or not). We apply complexity and relational perspectives to study historical and ongoing process of transformative change in ways that account for the complex, entangled, social-ecological and political nature of transformations. We are particularly interested in studying situations in which emerging novel ideas and practices face resistance and contestation by forces that aim to maintain the status quo. We use multi-methods approaches that combine empirical research, transdisciplinary engagement, and agent-based and dynamical systems modeling with the aim to advance transformation theory. The researcher will join an interdisciplinary team of empirical social-ecological researchers, modelers and philosophers at SRC.

This postdoctoral position offers an opportunity to engage in place-based research with global impact. You will be part of a dynamic and interdisciplinary team working in collaboration with Stanford University’s Natural Capital Project (NatCap) on a pioneering research initiative funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation. Your work will contribute to the development and adaptation of the Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) framework, originally implemented in China, to the distinct social-ecological contexts of Sweden. 

Despite that borosilicate glasses (BS) are exploited in numerous applications from everyday products to nuclear waste encapsulation and biomedical implants, the understanding of their sub-nanometer structure remains limited. In particular, some “exotic” structural motifs, such as directly interlinked BO₄ groups (B^[4]-O-B^[4] linkages) and non-bridging O (NBO) species at BO₄ groups (B^[4]-NBO bonds) are either considered absent or remains largely ignored in current BS glass-structure models. Yet, we have recently shown that B^[4]-O-B^[4] linkages are both inherent and abundant structrual motifs in BS glasses [1,3]. The present postdoctoral project is an extension of our recent research on structure and properties of BS glasses [1-3], where magic-angle-spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy will be utilized for unravelling the borosilicate glass structure across a sub-nanometer scale. Those results will then be analysed in conjunction with measured mechanical and elastic properties of the glasses to establish composition-structure-property relationships. One part of the project also involves the development of new NMR experimental techniques for an improved probing of ¹¹B-¹⁷O connectivities in borate-based glasses.