Two PhD Studentships at the Centre for
Policy Modelling
Stipend:
£13,290 per annum + applicable fees
1+3 years or 3 years deending on
experience
Applications are invited for 2 phd students to work on modelling
projects associated with the EPSRC project: the
Social Complexity of Immigration and Diversity (SCID).
This project is in association with the University of Manchester's Institute for Social Change and
its Department of Theoretical Physics.
This is a high-profile and ambitious project that aims to develop a new
approach to using simulations to gain understanding of important social
issues.
The project will last for 5 years starting 1 September 2010.
The period of study will involve the development of detailed
agent-based
simulations reflecting as much of the evidence as possible about a case
study from one of 3 areas (fof details see the project description):
- Diversity, homophily and social trust
- Socio-political integration
- Socio-economic inequality
The evidence will be provided by experts at the Institute for Social
Change. The central challenge of the PhD will be to integrate as much
of this evidence as possible within Agent-based Simulations.
For more details see the project description at: http://cfpm.org/scid/SCID-Description.html
Applicants should preferably have a Masters-level degree in a
relevant
discipline, preferably with an element of computer science or
computational social science. The candidate should thus have a
reasonable level programming and/or
simulation experience. An ability to learn to program simulations in
Java/Repast is a must. Knowledge of sociology in one of the above
areas is also an advantage. The candidate has to be an EU
national.
The CPM is one of the few research centres in the world that focuses on
social simulation. Since its inception in 1992 it has developed
its unique blend of trans-disciplinary research, crossing the areas of
: artificial intelligence, complexity scicence, philosophy and
computational social science (to get an idea of its scope browse its discussion papers). It
has built up a reputation and track-record over
that time being involved in a number of EU and UK projects (Ocopomo, EMIL,
Nania, NeWater, GIACS, CAVES, CCDEW, FIRMA, IMIS). The CPM is a
happy, informal, fairly chaotic but, we believe, very creative
lab. For more information about the work of the Centre see its
website at http://cfpm.org
For informal discussions about the post, contact Bruce Edmonds on +44
(0) 161 3886 or email to bruce@edmonds.name.
To apply, send a CV with
a covering letter to Bruce Edmonds,
Centre for
Policy Modelling, MMUBS, Aytoun Building, Aytoun Street, M1 3GH,
UK.
The University is committed to an Equal Opportunities Policy.