The ARS Africae project (https://www.ars-africae.org/) is running an interdisciplinary workshop on ecological modelling at Wits Rural Facility (near Hoedspruit) from the 27th Feb to the 2nd March 2018. This workshop will introduce multi-agent modeling as an approach for dealing with complex SES; as well as vegetation modeling. This workshop should appeal to participants interested in ecological modelling, as well as stakeholders involved in management. If you are interested, contact Karen Bradshaw (k.bradshaw@ru.ac.za), stating your area of interest and any specific topics for discussion. Funding is also available, for more information please consult the attachment below. Call for Participation 2018

The SARChI Chair in Transformative Social Learning and Green Skills Learning Pathways at Rhodes University, located in the Environmental Learning Research Centre in the Faculty of Education in Grahamstown, South Africa (see www.ru.ac.za/elrc), has two full time Masters in Education scholarships available for motivated, high achieving scholars with an interest in the above areas. The researchers will be required to undertake inter-disciplinary research, with emphasis on social learning in a food and water security management context. The researchers will be required to undertake rigorous, theoretically strong qualitative research focusing on the capacity building and social learning of key actors within [...]

Escalating global challenges such as climate change,  food and water security, biodiversity loss, socio‐political conflict and economic volatility, demand new approaches to researching and governing our environment and  societies.  Approaches  that  account  for  the  complex  relationships  between  human  well‐being  and ecological  sustainability,  while  dealing  with  ongoing  change  and  uncertainty,  have  become  critical.  It  is  increasingly  apparent that fundamental reorganization of our societies is necessary to achieve a just society for all, while maintaining  the environmental conditions that underlie  human prosperity. Navigating such a  transformation  will  require a capacity  to deal with changes  that are  fundamentally unknown and unpredictable  ‐ a capacity  that is central to resilient systems. Building resilience of intertwined social and ecological systems is therefore increasingly regarded as essential to enabling sustainable development at local to global scales, and is a rapidly emerging research area worldwide. The  South  African  Research  Chair  in  Social‐Ecological  Systems  and  Resilience,  held  by  Dr  Reinette  (Oonsie)  Biggs, aims to contribute to this area specifically from a southern African perspective. The Chair is hosted by  the  newly  established  Centre  for  Complex  Systems  in  Transition  (CST)  at  Stellenbosch  University.  The  CST  builds  on  a  strong  history  of  transdisciplinary  research  and  complexity  studies,  and  hosts  several  leading  scientists and  [...]