Computational Social Sciences Specialist

The Organization

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

With novel partnerships, the Alliance generates evidence and mainstreams innovations to transform food systems and landscapes so that they sustain the planet, drive prosperity, and nourish people in a climate crisis. The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

With the establishment of CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, CGIAR aims to address gaps in knowledge about climate change and food security for peace and security policies and operations through a unique multidisciplinary approach. Our main objective is to align evidence from the realms of climate, land, and food systems science with peacebuilding efforts already underway that address socio-political security, stability, and peace through evidence-based environmental, political, and socio-economic solutions.

About the position

Within the Digital Innovation Flagship Initiative of the CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, a digital methods research strategy draws on computational social sciences, big data, and machine learning to develop new approaches to investigate the climate security nexus as represented in public digital spaces. The aim is to establish a toolbox of digital research solutions to complement and support the work of other Climate Security FIs and potentially other strategic domains within ONECGIAR. The CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security team is looking for a Computational Social Sciences Specialist to support the digital data analysis within this flagship and to further develop this research area within the CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and execution of the digital research strategy and contribute to the related digital methods analyses carried out in the various research projects.
• Support scientific/proposal writing, fundraising, and reporting.
• Communication and collaboration with the Climate Security team, such as socio-economic, big-data, and spatial data analysts.
• Collaboration with research assistants, visiting researchers, and/or students
• Reporting/communication to supervisor and donors

Qualifications and requirements:

• Advanced degree in the field of computational social sciences. A background in social sciences with strong computational and modeling skills is also acceptable.
• A minimum of 1 year of relevant professional or academic work experience in data-driven, mixed methods research, preferably in research for development organizations.
• Experience in international, multicultural settings and in interacting with researchers, policymakers, donors, and civil society.
• Extensive practice in data science.
• Strong conceptual thinking to develop innovative research approaches
• Experience in the design and implementation of online experiments as well as the critical analysis of their results.
• Thorough knowledge of natural language processing, network analysis, visual analysis, and/or machine learning.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or R.
• Good knowledge of data visualization solutions.
• Good scientific writing skills.
• Good communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team-oriented, multi-cultural environment.
• Intellectual curiosity and breadth.

Terms of employment

This is an internationally recruited position and will be based in either Nairobi (Kenya), Pretoria (South Africa), Cairo (Egypt), Dakar (Senegal), or home-based. (Please note that preference will be given to Pretoria and Cairo where possible). The initial contract will be for two (2) years, subject to a trial period of six (6) months, and is renewable based on performance and availability. This is a position at level BG8, on a scale of 14 levels, with level BG14 being the highest.

The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT offer a multicultural, collegial research environment with a competitive salary and excellent benefits. We are an equal opportunity employer, and strive for gender, diversity, and inclusion in our staff, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic.