Post-Doctoral Associate to study Inflation

Post-Doctoral Associate to study Inflation

The University of Vermont seeks a Postdoctoral Associate in Degrowth to research inflation, its drivers, and political impacts through a heterodox ecological economics lens as part of the Leadership for the Ecozoic initiative.

We seek a Post-doctoral Associate in Degrowth to join the Ecological Economics node of the Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) initiative at The University of Vermont
, within the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics (CDAE). We are specifically looking for an individual to research inflation, its drivers, and its political impacts
.

The position is for two years
, ideally beginning September 1, 2026
. The workload will be approximately 80% research and up to 20% student engagement and/or course design and teaching (if interested).

We have a very poor understanding of inflation. Our measures are limited, our drivers are empirically weak, and our solutions are blunt and in efficacious. This is due to the market-centrality of the hegemonic approach to inflation.

This project seeks to explore inflation as a liberal phenomenon
, drawing upon a broad heterodox social science literature including ecological economics, ecofeminism, sociology, political economy, and degrowth
. We also seek to explore the political dynamics of inflation through a post-liberal lens that aims to re-embed value by rejecting the liberal separation between economy, community, and ecology.

This project hopes to build a political economic theory of inflation as a distributional and political process, power relation, and ecological dynamic.

Key questions include:

• What is inflation and how is it measured?
• What causes inflation?
• What reduces or mediates the impacts of inflation?