Open postdoctoral position at UiT (Norway), focused on cross-cultural, developmental psychology

UiT The Arctic University of Norway has established «The Arctic MSCA-PF program» (uit.no/project/arcticmsca) to recruit excellent young researchers planning to apply for a Marie Skƚodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) to pursue a career in research. We invite applications from promising young researchers within the field of Developmental Psychology/(Cross-)Cultural Psychology/Family Studies. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-PF at UiT together with Dr. Monika Abels. This is an opportunity to accelerate your research career while living in the urban research city of Tromsø, uniquely located at the top of the world surrounded by some of Europe’s last pristine wild nature.

This call is one of 55 from pre-selected supervisors at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through the “Arctic MSCA-PF program” (uit.no/project/arcticmsca/list-of-participants). Successful postdoc candidates will be invited to Tromsø (travel and accommodation expenses covered) for a three-day MSCA-PF symposium June 8-10, 2022 (if pandemic allows). At this event, the candidates will present their past research achievements, discuss future plans with their potential supervisor and learn how to write a successful MSCA-PF application. The selected candidates will, jointly with the supervisor, write the MSCA-PF application by the deadline of September 14, 2022.

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of Developmental Psychology/Cross-Cultural Psychology/Family Studies as presented by Dr. Abels:

My research is based on the assumption that children develop in a social context which can be defined by eco-cultural factors. Aspects that are of particular interest to me are families’/communities’ livelihood patterns, caregivers’ characteristics such as educational achievements and values, children’s daily experiences and their socio-cognitive development, for instance relating to communication. Culture, from this point of view, happens in everyday life and cannot be equated with nation states as conditions within one state can vary widely, whereas there can be similarities in conditions in very different places of the world.

The approach to these topics utilizes different methods. For instance, caregivers can be interviewed about their child-rearing ethnotheories. Another important method in my research is behavioral observation, both in situ and from videos. Occasionally, these are supplemented by more structured procedures meant to elicit certain behaviors.

Recent research examples concern Norwegian mothers’ beliefs about infants’ sleeping places, Hadza hunter-gatherer’s speech addressed to infants, rural and urban Indian infants’ gestures and triadic attention and the effect of mobile phones on parent-child interactions.

Please send your CV (max 3 pages) and describe a research project that will strengthen and complement the presented research (max 2 pages) to monika.abels@uit.no by Feb 25th 2022. Mark your application "Arctic MSCA".

Open postdoctoral position at UiT (Norway), focused on hunter-gatherer education

UiT The Arctic University of Norway has established «The Arctic MSCA-IF program» (https://uit.no/project/arcticmsca) to recruit excellent young researchers planning to apply for a Marie Skƚodowska-Curie individual fellowship (MSCA-IF) to pursue a career in research. We invite applications from promising young researchers within the field of social anthropology. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-IF at UiT together with Prof. Jennifer Hays. This is an opportunity to accelerate your research career while living in the urban research city of Tromsø, uniquely located at the top of the world surrounded by some of Europe’s last pristine wild nature.

This call is one of 55 from pre-selected supervisors at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through the “Arctic MSCA-PF program” (uit.no/project/arcticmsca/list-of-participants). Successful postdoc candidates will be invited to Tromsø (travel and accommodation expenses covered) for a three-day MSCA-PF symposium June 8-10, 2022 (if pandemic allows). At this event, the candidates will present their past research achievements, discuss future plans with their potential supervisor, and learn how to write a successful MSCA-PF application. The selected candidates will, jointly with the supervisor, write the MSCA-PF application by the deadline of September 14, 2022.

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of social anthropology as presented by Prof. Jennifer Hays:

Hunter-gatherer communities worldwide, especially those in the Global South, must increasingly negotiate formal education systems as opportunities for engaging in traditional subsistence strategies are narrowed due to sedentarization and land loss. While ‘schooling’ provides access to skills and knowledge needed to engage with the dominant society, success in such systems remains elusive. The limited participation they do have often undermines local knowledge, skills, languages, values, culture, and relationships – all of which are central to traditional forms of livelihood and relations with nature. Recent comparative studies and literature reviews focusing on hunter-gatherers and school indicate both that there are clearly identifiable broad patterns affecting hunter-gatherer communities, and also that local situations are characterized by extreme diversity – thus pointing towards a need for small-scale, locally driven educational efforts informed by global understandings. How are particular communities and individuals navigating their educational options? What challenges are they facing? In connection with the Research and Advocacy Group for Hunter-Gatherer Education (HG-Edu), this call seeks talented researchers to contribute to a comparative project that focuses on participatory research with hunter-gatherer communities. The research will connect education with traditional knowledge and skills, land and biodiversity, language and identity, and/or human rights.

For more information visit:

https://en.uit.no/ansatte/person?p_document_id=66352

[Paper Spotlight] Gathering is Not Only for Girls

Check out this new paper by Guillermo Zorrilla-Revilla & colleagues examining energetic differences by sex in gathering-related activities among Spanish children and adolescents.

Gathering is Not Only for Girls: No Infuence of Energy Expenditure on the Onset of Sexual Division of Labor

Guillermo Zorrilla‐Revilla · Jesús Rodríguez · Ana Mateos

Abstract: In some small-scale societies, a sexual division of labor is common. For subadult hunter-gatherers, the onset of this division dates to middle childhood and the start of puberty; however, there is apparently no physiological explanation for this timing. The present study uses an experimental approach to evaluate possible energetic differences by sex in gathering-related activities. The energetic cost of gathering-related activities was measured in a sample of 42 subjects of both sexes aged between 8 and 14 years. Body mass and other anthropometric variables were also recorded. Our results show that the energetic differences in the simulated gathering activities depend only on body mass. Both sexes expend a similar amount of energy during locomotion activities related to gathering. Discarding the energetic factor, the sexual division of tasks may be explained as an adaptation to acquire the skills needed to undertake the complex activities required during adulthood as early as possible. Carrying out gathering activities during childhood and adolescence could be favored by the growth and development cycles of Homo sapiens. Moreover, if most of the energetic costs of gathering activities depend on body mass, the delayed growth in humans relative to other primates allows subadults to practice these tasks for longer periods, and to become better at performing them. In fact, this strategy could enable them to acquire adults' complex skills at a low energetic cost that can be easily subsidized by other members of the group.

Click here to access the paper, out now in Human Nature.