Research Associate in Nature Finance

Location:  Environmental Change Institute (ECI), School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE), South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY

The Role

The researcher will be an important part of the Resilience and Development Group of the Environmental Change Institute and will be part of a team of researchers collaborating together across ECI and academic partner institutions to deliver the Greening Finance for Nature flagship of the UKRI Integrating Finance and Biodiversity (IFB) Programme. The researcher will have the opportunity to contribute to and/or lead one or more defined projects within the IFB programme as well as across our wider research portfolio, e.g. the Resilient Planet Initiative, for example:

• Working with banks, insurers, asset owners and asset managers to design metrics and frameworks to integrate nature into their business strategies and risk management frameworks and design new financial products to support resilience and nature.

• Working with Central Banks and Ministries of Finance in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to build financial resilience to nature-related risks and put in place sustainable finance frameworks to help steer capital away from activities that damage nature and mobilise investment in nature recovery.

• Assessing current and designing new forms of analytics and metrics to measure the impact of investments on nature-related goals and measure the alignment of firms and financial flows with the Global Biodiversity Framework.

• Contributing to our work on global systemic resilience, including learning from past nature-related shocks, building the next generation of predictive and exploratory models and working with governments to develop frameworks to manage risks.

• Contributing to our global collaboration to develop open globally-consistent nature and climate risk analytics and tools as part of the Resilient Planet initiative.

You will contribute to research on quantitative methods to develop and test metrics, analytical tools and frameworks to assess nature-related risks, impacts and dependencies and the alignment of finance with biodiversity goals. This particularly includes (i) nature-climate-economy modelling, and (ii) geospatial data analytics. You will work in interdisciplinary teams as part of academic research collaborations across Oxford, the UK and internationally and have opportunities to lead applied research projects with a range of stakeholders, including civil society organisations, multilateral development banks, Central Banks and supervisors, banks, insurers, asset owners and asset managers and government.

The researcher will report to Dr Nicola Ranger in the Environmental Change Institute, the Programme Leader on Resilience and Development, as well as have opportunities to collaborate with other senior researchers across the university and internationally.

Responsibilities

• Manage own academic research and administrative activities. This involves small scale project management, to co-ordinate multiple aspects of work to meet deadlines

• Actively participate in and lead tasked scientific activities and contribute to the scientific development of projects. Apply, develop, adapt and implement new research methods.

• Prepare working theories and analyse qualitative and/or quantitative data from a variety of sources, reviewing and refining theories as appropriate.

• Contribute to and lead publications in highly-ranked, peer-reviewed academic journals, as well as book chapters and reviews. Present papers at conferences, and lead seminars to disseminate research findings.

• Contribute ideas for new research projects, including exploring further opportunities for novel research on climate and environmental risks and resilience solutions.

• Develop ideas for generating research income, and present detailed research proposals to senior researchers.