Senior Research Fellow (Economics)

Interested applicants are invited to apply directly at the

Your application will be processed only if you apply via

We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Job Description

Senior Research Fellow in the social sciences of the protein transition. The scope and responsibilities are listed below.

The position will be housed on the NUS Kent Ridge campus at the LRF Institute for Public Understanding of Risk, with which several Bezos Centre/SFS PIs are affiliated.

Scope and Responsibilities:

Working closely with four inter-disciplinary Principal Investigators at the Bezos Centre Consumer Platform and SFS 2.0 DIGEST (Alberto Salvo/Economics & IPUR, Weiyu Zhang/Communications and New Media & IPUR, Leonard Lee/Marketing & IPUR, and Mei Hui Liu/Food Science and Technology), the Senior Research Fellow will assume a leading role to design and implement the consumer research proposed and funded by the Bezos Earth Fund and the Singapore Food Story 2.0. The work scope includes a multi-month revealed-preference household field panel study with actual food choices and education treatments, and consumer feedback and sensory evaluations regarding the key drivers and barriers to consumer acceptance of hybrid and alternative protein food products. Targeted demographic groups are households sampled from a general population, young adults at universities, and youth and their parents. The Senior Research Fellow will help to train junior researchers to further build Singapore's capabilities to meet recently revised resilient food supply goals 2035 and sustainable food consumption under the Singapore Green Plan 2030. S/he will further assist the team in developing relationships to test alternative protein adoption by young adults residing on campus, where several thousand meals are purchased each day.

Required skills and interests:

The Senior Research Fellow will be a motivated and outstanding social scientist with multiple years of research experience focused on understanding and influencing the human behavior needed to increase consumer adoption of sustainable and novel protein foods. S/he will be driven to execute consumer research on food behavior for scientific publication at the highest level and to effectively communicate the research findings to broader audiences including policymakers, the food industry, social organizations, novel food festival or workshop attendees, specific subgroups (e.g., environmentally aware, religiously driven, health and fitness, or foodies trying new foods), and the public at large.

Qualifications

• A PhD in a relevant social science awarded by a reputed institution.
• At least 3 years (and ideally more) of relevant experience at a relevant institution designing and implementing well-identified field research on consumer adoption of alternative proteins and overseeing the research all the way to publication in reputed scientific journals.
• Strong communications skills, both verbal and in writing, including the ability to prepare education materials, persuasive messages, and storytelling regarding eating behaviors and identity, food habits, and risk perception.
• A record of raising research funds, training junior and field staff in research methods and implementation, managing research projects including ethics review and participant recruitment, and effectively communicating research findings. Relevant research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, may include field randomized control trials, focus group discussions, sensory evaluations, and in-person/online surveys and choice experiments.
• The ability to work with colleagues, including various social scientists, food and nutrition (and other) scientists, and university and school educators and administrators in general.
• Field experience ideally includes Singapore and/or Southeast Asian food behavioral settings. Because the funding prescribes translational research, knowledge of the Singapore-based sustainable/novel proteins industry would be valuable (e.g., designing and implementing scientific workshops involving academics, industry and public agencies).