‘Edinburgh Peacetech’ is a new initiative being developed at the University of Edinburgh in conjunction with other NGOs (notably Beyond Borders) and tech companies. It seeks to develop tools for connecting data and peacebuilding. The overarching vision is to build a collaborative PeaceTech hub based in Edinburgh, to harness the energies of interdisciplinary research, peacebuilding practitioners, and technology providers, which would produce a radical improvement in how peace processes are designed and managed to effectively end violent conflict.

The Fellowship offers an exciting opportunity to be at the heart of peace negotiations and civil society deliberations and to innovate in provision of inclusive peacemaking tools. This Fellowship provides an opportunity to help us shape a research agenda and new form of academic – NGO – business collaboration, for how data collection, analysis and visualisation can support conflict interpretation and peace processes. The fellowship will investigate how data analytics, data visualization, distributed applications and platforms for engagement and participation can help us monitor and understand conflict and peace processes worldwide. This can include text mining and analysis, aggregating data from different sources, dealing with incomplete and uncertain data, developing faithful visual representations of geographic multivariate and potentially temporal data, in innovative and interactive forms.

The successful candidate will need to have strong programming skills, and experience in several of the following:

Interested candidates should contact Professor Christine Bell at Christine.bell@ed.ac.uk for an informal discussion before applying, as there may be capacity for support with some of the eligibility requirements, such as placements. Click here for further details via the TRAIN@Ed website, including eligibility criteria and how to apply.

Closing date 14 May 2019 at 5pm (GMT).