Research Associate - Water for Sanitation and Health (A2205)

Lancaster Environment Centre is seeking to appoint a full-time Postdoctoral Research Associate for the £6.8M RECIRCULATE project funded by Research Councils UK through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) - http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/funding/gcrf/growingcapability/

GCRF funding over 4 years will support new partnership-based approaches to enable West African researchers to grow transformational impact through (i) working with, in and for their communities and (ii) developing robust, durable and equitable partnerships with UK researchers.  RECIRCULATE is a collaboration between Lancaster University (LUMS LEC, Engineering and Biomedical & Life Sciences), LU Ghana, CSIR Ghana, and University of Benin, with phased expansion to other partners in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana.

You will play a leading role in Work Package 2: Water for Sanitation and Health which seeks to transform infrastructure and practice to prevent drinking water contamination by sewage in burgeoning informal settlements of urban Africa. This will involve observational and action research in selected low-income settlements in Accra, Ghana. Working in harmony with other work packages, you will help transform research into practice through building research capacity, promoting changes on the ground, and harnessing innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities in different African contexts. The project will also involve delivering an ‘escalator of training and capacity building activities’ in order to enable West African researchers to grow transformational impact through (i) working with, in and for their communities and (ii) developing robust, durable and equitable partnerships with UK researchers.

Understand how ‘the last 100 metres’ problem manifests itself across a range of contexts (including those related to food and energy, see WPs 3&4) and 

identify interventions (eco-innovations and/or changes to practice) that reduce contamination (see WP5) in the last 100 metres in those contexts. As well as extending     understanding of “the last 100 metres” to West Africa, WP2 will draw on the learning from WP1 to work with the wider community (our Pillars 2&3) to develop business cases to roll-out successful interventions to improve sanitation and health for communities in Nigeria and Ghana. 

This post is initially for 48 months commencing in March 2018.

We welcome applications from people in all diversity groups.

Closing Date: 04 Mar 2018
Category: Research