This postdoc project will be part of the ECONOVO research theme 1: Diversity Dynamics, focused on understanding biodiversity dynamics in novel ecosystems (NEs) past and present. This position is focused on understanding the diverse roles humans might have in ecosystems globally by applying a functional trait perspective that integrates cross-cultural ethnographic idata (from, for instance, D-PLACE), palaeodemography (from, for instance, HYDE), and estimates of human energy consumption. Humans have evolved the unique, culturally and technologically mediated ability to act in multiple different ecological roles – for instance, as foragers, pastoralists, farmers, industrialists – and these variable socio-economic constellations determine their interactions with the environment. Our aim is to understand these ecological interactions globally in a data-driven macroecological approach, and to articulate these analyses with projections of future climate, human energy consumption, and human niche dynamics differentiated by socio-economic constellation. The postdoc is expected to lead an investigation that combines functional trait theory, metabolic theory and energetics, macroecological modelling, and human socio-ecology to better understand the variable roles adopted by human communities practicing different economies within ecosystems, and their impacts on these – past, present, and future.

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