Post-doctoral Research Fellow (AHRC project "Responsibilities, Ethics and the Financial Crisis") (EXPIRED)

Starting salary £24,520 a year, in a range up to £26,779 a year.

The post-holder will contribute to a major AHRC research project, entitled, Responsibilities, Ethics and the Financial Crisis' (short title: FINCRIS), scheduled to run for three years (1 May 2012-30 April 2015). FINCRIS is an interdisciplinary project to be conducted entirely by University of Birmingham staff. It is led by Prof. Tom Sorell (Centre for the Study of Global Ethics) and the two other senior investigators are from the School of Public Policy and Birmingham Business School. The post-holder will work closely with Prof. Sorell to deliver the philosophy and ethics component of FINCRIS. This will entail:

1. establishing an agreed narrative of how the financial crisis developed, based on literature review; 
2. identifying the main institutional agents involved; 
3. describing some of the behaviour of  individuals involved, e.g. individual borrowers (especially in the mortgage market; individual heads of banks requiring rescue, e.g. Fred Goodwin); 
4. assigning responsibilities for the crisis based on (1) through (3); 
5. identifying obligations of the agents involved, given (4), and given general considerations about the assignment of responsibility in complex interactions between many agents.

The post-holder will have a first degree in philosophy or political theory and will have a PhD either completed or about to be examined in analytic applied ethics, or analytic applied political theory. He or she will be based in the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics, School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion and be expected to contribute to research in the Centre more generally  (including producing research outputs, typically articles in high impact peer review journals as well as making applications for further funding). There will also be some research administrative support, web-site and meeting organization responsibilities. The appointee may be asked to take on a modest amount of ethics teaching.

Closing date: 10 March 2012

Reference: 44558

To download the details and submit an electronic application online visit: www.hr.bham.ac.uk/jobs alternatively information can be obtained from 0121 415 9000.