Paid Assistants in Peace Analytics (deadline extended)

The Political Settlement Reserch Programme (https://www.politicalsettlements.org) and the VisHub Lab (http://vishub.net) are seeking up to 3 project assistants to help with web-based applications development in paid assistantships, within the Schools of Law and Informatics, University of Edinburgh The tasks deal with data analytics using programming and visualization.

Broadly, the topics of research are:

• “Multi-layered peace data modelling and visualization on a map-based interface.” Based on https://pax.peaceagreements.org/static/covid19ceasefires/map we are further planning to add more data in an additional data layer and added visualization options.
• “Multi-platform peace and conflict data analysis and visualization infrastructure for in-depth view”, based on https://dbhatedin.github.io/CuratedTrackersLibrary/ we want to demo an integrated package with spatial capacities working on conflict data from multiple sources and locations.

Both topics require programming skills, data manipulation, databases, web-based application and visualization development. The developers should be familiar with github/gitlab. The project is flexible as to what development tools one can use, mostly open source preferred, (Java, Python, PostgreSQL, MySQL, QGIS, MapBox etc), and familiarity with web-mapping is needed. We can guide with visualization and geo-spatial tasks (e.g., with Tableau, Geo-coding etc as and when needed).

For the above two topics we require 3 roles – a Database developer (back-end), a web / user side developer (front-end), and a Visualization developer. Each will require approximately 50-55 hours (totaling around 160 hours) which will be paid at the UE06-24 level (pro rata). The time frame for completion is by end of March 2022, and we start immediately, upon selection. Those who are interested (and match the required criteria) can send in their detailed CV and cover letter explaining how they match the above criteria, as soon as possible, to Dr. Devanjan Bhattacharya at d.bhattacharya@ed.ac.uk.

It may be noted that the topics complement each other and overlap in some areas so the hired will benefit from working together as a group.

Eligibility to Work In accordance with the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, the University of Edinburgh, as an employer, has a legal responsibility to prevent illegal working and therefore must check that all employees are entitled to work in the United Kingdom (UK). To do so, the University of Edinburgh requires to see documents evidencing right to work in the UK before commencement of employment. University procedures restrict working for full-time PhD students to an average of 9 hours a week. Tier 4 students are restricted to 20 hours a week in semester time only.

Contact: Dr. Devanjan Bhattacharya, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions TRAIN@ED Fellow, Data Driven Innovation (DDI) Initiative Edinburgh, School of Law and School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/people/dr-devanjan-bhattacharya d.bhattacharya@ed.ac.uk