ISSC calls for applications from outstanding early career social scientists around the world to become World Social Science Fellows and participate in a World Social Science Seminar on “Sustainable Urbanization: Innovative approaches to understanding urbanization in the 21st century”.

The ISSC is an international organisation that aims to advance the practice and use of the social and behavioural sciences in all parts of the world, and to ensure their global representation. This seminar series is organised in partnership with The Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP).

Urban areas have been recognized as key elements for the future of global societies, as the locus of major social and environmental transformations and as drivers of positive and negative change. We have a solid but fragmented basis for understanding urban areas, based on disciplinary contributions from the social sciences, humanities, and the natural and physical sciences studying global and local processes of urbanization.

What we need is multidimensional perspectives capable of addressing the complex interactions in space and time among the social, economic, political, cultural, physical and environmental dimensions of urbanization. These interactions constitute the driving forces behind the type, extent, and intensity of urban growth and conditions for the transition to a more sustainable future.

What we are looking for is 20 World Social Science Fellows – talented, early career social scientists to start developing these interdisciplinary perspectives at a seminar in Quito, Ecuador, and to take them forward in their research and teaching activities after the seminar.

What we are offering is the opportunity to interact with some of the leading thinkers in this area, a global group of other talented early career social scientists, as well as a number of policy makers/practitioners, activists, and other stakeholders. We will also cover travel costs for your journey to Quito and local travel and subsistence costs.

Work as a World Social Science Fellow starts at the seminar, but it does not end there. We will ask all Fellows to work together during and after the seminar to develop one co-authored publication presenting and discussing their main conclusions. This publication should become the basis of an online consultation with an international community of scholars, to inform work of a new set of World Social Science Fellows at a subsequent seminar. Although the ISSC will facilitate the electronic consultation, the participants of the workshop are expected to take ownership of this process.

What we hope is that being a World Social Science Fellow will enable you to forge new and lasting networks that can stimulate and support transformative social science research, and that the experience will provide a basis for advancing your own career as a member – and future leader – of the international social science community.

Applications can be submitted electronically and in one file by E-mail.

Deadline for submission of applications: December 16th, 2012

Successful applicants will be informed by late January 2013.