Biography
Nick Roxburgh joined the James Hutton Institute as a Social Systems Simulation Modeller in 2021. He specialises in developing agent-based models of social and socio-environmental systems, with a particular focus at present on agriculture, food value chains, global food trade, and rural economies.
Prior to his current post, he worked as an International Research Scientist at UFZ in Leipzig and as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Namur in Belgium. Preceding this, he earnt his PhD for a project that involved modelling the combinatory impact of stressors on remote mountain communities in Nepal. During his time as a PhD researcher, he was additionally involved in international collaborations examining the potential implications of urban water supply improvements in Kenya and exploring public responses to extreme weather events in Japan and the USA.
While much of his work now centres around the use of computational methods, he initially trained as a geographer with a more qualitative focus, obtaining an MA (Hons) from the University of St Andrews in 2010. Stemming from this, he takes a keen interest in how participatory research, quantitative ethnographic methods, and grounded theory can be utilised in the modelling process to unlock rich insights into individual human behaviour and societal processes.
In 2023 he received the Open Science Award from the International Land Use Study Centre for his work on using wikis as collaborative knowledge management tools in socio-environmental modelling studies.
