The Responsive Forest Governance Initiative (RFGI) is a program of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). It is being implemented with support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).
Call for Applications
RFGI is setting up multidisciplinary social science research teams on forest resource governance in several African countries. RFGI is currently inviting applications from social-science researchers with field research background in forestry, local governance, and rural political economy to join the research teams to work in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and South Sudan. Members of these research teams will work fulltime for the entire duration of their contracts. They will take part in an eighteen-month commitment to in-depth comparative research on the local democracy effects of forestry interventions.
Remuneration
Researchers will be paid a lump sum of $20,000 for their participation. The first half of this sum will be paid in four instalments: part at each of the three research meetings with the remainder paid at the delivery of a final approved peer reviewed working paper. Researchers will also be provided with funds for transport to and from field sites and to cover meals and lodging for up to four weeks of supplementary field research. Transport, meals and lodging for RFGI international meetings will also be covered by the program.
Qualifications
Research applicants must:
- Hold a master’s degree or higher;
- Show a strong intellectual capacity for social science research and thinking;
- Have conducted in the past in-depth field-based research on forestry governance. This research experience and field data should be sufficient to form the basis of the RFGI research report. The program cannot fund full-time researchers for this program, the research reports must build on the existing research of the researcher.
- Have excellent writing skills;
- Be fluent in either French or English;
Criteria for Application Review and Researcher
- Conceptual and expositional clarity of your essays;
- Relevance of hypotheses and research questions;
- Use of the literature in your essay;
- Your educational background;
- Your field research experience and its relevance to the RFGI objectives;
- Letters of recommendation;
- Completion of all parts of the application.
Last date for submitting the applications is October 10, 2011.
For more information and details, you can visit this link.
