Postdoctoral researcher in NCN project (MAESTRO-12 call): "Polycentric urban regions:...

The post-doc position applies to a person who obtained a doctoral degree no earlier than 7 years before the year of employment in the project, i.e. a person who obtained a doctoral degree in or later.

** The following conditions also apply:

(a) The doctoral degree has not been conferred by the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń ;

b) The employment covers a period of more than 6 months;

c) During the period of receiving a remuneration, he/she will not receive any other remuneration from the funds allocated within the direct costs from research projects financed within NCN competitions;

d) During the period of drawing this remuneration, he/she will not draw remuneration from another employer on the basis of an employment contract, including from an employer based outside of Poland.

* The post-doc position applies to a person who obtained a doctoral degree no earlier than 7 years before the year of employment in the project, i.e. a person who obtained a doctoral degree in or later.

** The following conditions also apply:

(a) The doctoral degree has not been conferred by the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń ;

b) The employment covers a period of more than 6 months;

c) During the period of receiving a remuneration, he/she will not receive any other remuneration from the funds allocated within the direct costs from research projects financed within NCN competitions;

d) During the period of drawing this remuneration, he/she will not draw remuneration from another employer on the basis of an employment contract, including from an employer based outside of Poland.

Description of tasks:

This fellowship will be part of a larger project to develop a research framework for analysing 'polycentric urban regions'. The purpose is to significantly advance our understanding of their occurrence, importance, and future development. In its most basic form, the term refers to regions characterised by (1) the presence of a number of more or less proximate centres without (2) a clear differentiation in terms of their overall importance (e.g. the Dutch Randstad). A number of scientific publications have hypothesised that polycentric urban regions are gaining in importance. In the context of the relative lack of a comprehensive effort to identify and analyse polycentric city regions, the specific research objective of this postdoctoral fellowship is to systematically identify and study regions that are characterised by a balanced size distribution of proximately located urban agglomerations. Special attention will be paid to the fuzzy borderlands with other types of urban systems and other scales of urban polycentricity: in practice, one can expect to find a functional and scalar continuum of "urban polycentricity". A first comprehensive list of PURs will be developed, relationships with other scales will be established and geographical patterns of similarity and difference (in terms of scale, border regions, spatial outline and density) will be identified.

In particular, the postdoctoral fellow's tasks will be to:

- review key methods for identifying cities and functional regions,

- contribute to the development of PURban, an open software tool for the identification of polycentric urban regions

- apply spatial-econometric methodologies to investigate (putative) relationships between polycentric city regions and a range of economic, environmental and social processes;

- contribute to the preparation of English-language publications.

NCN competition type: Maestro-12

We offer:

- the opportunity to develop skills and gain experience in urban geography and regional studies under the guidance of a leading international expert;

- substantive support to develop a scientific career in a supportive working environment.

Additional information:

- academic curriculum vitae (in English);

- motivation letter (in English);

- copy of doctoral diploma;

- e-mail addresses of two academic references;

- a digital copy of an article of which the candidate was the first author.