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The Research Foundation of The City University of New York (RFCUNY) invites applications for a full-time, three-year postdoctoral fellow in Environmental History as part of the project “Melting Metropolis: everyday histories of health and heat in London, New York, and Paris since 1945.” The position is hosted by the Department of History at Queens College CUNY and supervised by Dr Kara Schlichting. 

Melting Metropolis is a five-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust. It explores the history of high temperatures in the postwar era, taking three global cities as its focus: London, New York and Paris. Drawing on and contributing to studies on climate justice, it investigates how Londoners, New Yorkers and Parisians have experienced heat and sought to mitigate its impact on their health and wellbeing. Community engagement is threaded throughout the project and informs how the project team seeks to rethink understandings of urban heat by moving beyond a focus on 'resilience.' In seeking to create new academic and non-academic conversations on the challenging interaction between the climate crisis and cities, it will provide fresh perspectives on urban history, environmental history, the medical humanities, and emotional and sensory history. 

The successful candidate will join a collaborative research team based in both the UK and the US. Melting Metropolis is led by Professor Chris Pearson of the University of Liverpool (Principal Investigator, PI). The successful candidate will be based in the History Department at Queens College CUNY in Flushing, Queens, and take part in both New York City-based and online project activities and meetings. The project team comprises three Co-Investigators (CI: Dr. Laura Balderstone, University of Liverpool, Dr. Kara Schlichting, Queens College CUNY, and Dr. Shelda-Jane Smith, University of Liverpool), a Research Artist (Bryony Benge-Abbott), a Community Engagement Manager, a Project Manager, four postdoctoral researchers, and a PhD student.