The Keller Science and Action Center at The Field Museum seeks an experienced social scientist with a background in conservation and community-based development to join an interdisciplinary team committed to translating science into action for conservation and improved quality of life for forest dwellers in the Andes-Amazon region. The team combines research with sustained partner engagement to build a programmatic approach to linking conservation and wellbeing.
Our approach to conservation puts human well-being at the center, leveraging local peoples’ cultural, social, environmental, and organizational assets to maximize their quality of life while achieving environmental objectives. Over the past decade, we have developed an approach to participatory conservation and well-being through quality of life planning with communities in the Peruvian Amazon. We are currently building a program to work with in-country partners to scale our approaches and secure long-term institutional support. The qualified candidate will play a central role in strengthening and expanding this program to other countries in the region, contributing creatively, intellectually, and substantively to our methods, vision, strategy, and future directions.
This is a 3 year term position and involves travel to South America, likely close to 20-30% of the year.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Implement The Field Museum’s approach for well-being with in-country partners
- Work directly with an in-country team to support training partners to develop and implement quality of life plans
- Build partnerships with in-country stakeholders to link quality of life plans and community priorities to policy processes
- Support monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive improvement of the program
- Write grant proposals, technical reports, publications, and other materials for dissemination
Qualifications
- Masters or Ph.D. in anthropology, human ecology, sustainable development, cultural geography, environmental or ecological economics with a social science emphasis.
- Five years of more experience in the implementation of participatory conservation and sustainable natural resource use programs with forest dwellers in tropical landscapes, including conducting participatory action research or participatory appraisal.
- Experience communicating scientific results to diverse stakeholders from policy makers to local communities.
- Committed to improving quality of life based on local peoples’ assets and cultural norms
- Fluency in Spanish, written and spoken
Preferred:
- Experience with different types of community development projects relevant to the Amazon, such as fisheries management, coffee or cacao agroforestry systems, small-scale artisanal production, eco-tourism, etc.
- Facilitation and group management skills
- Excellent communication, synthesizing, and writing skills
Apply at https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/careers?hireology_job_id=93880.
