Research Assistant / Fellow (Computational Social Scientist)

About us

The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is an interdisciplinary research institute focusing on the science of cities, applying it to city planning, policy and architecture in the pursuit of making our cities better places to live in. It is part of The Bartlett, UCL's Faculty of the Built Environment, one of the world’s largest and most successful centres of built environment research and teaching, with the most world-leading research in its field in the UK, according to the Government’s Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014).

About the role

UCL is recruiting for a computational social scientist at either pre-doc (Research Assistant) or post-doc (Research Fellow) level, subject to skills and experience. You will join an ESRC-funded project exploring the economic effects of diverse teams, workplaces and cities on UK entrepreneurship, innovation and productivity. Led from UCL, the group includes collaborators at LSE, Birmingham, Toronto and Insubria Universities. The post is available immediately and is funded until 30/06/2025 in the first instance. Working with the project leads and a post-doc economist, this role will involve: extracting and managing very large frontier individual and firm-level datasets from online sources; data and entity linkage, including to administrative microdata; conducting analysis and modelling to support econometric and related insight, and contributing to authored/ co-authored journal articles and other outputs.

About you

The postholder will have a Masters's degree (Research Assistant) or PHD (Research Fellow) in economics, economic geography, sociology, computer science or similar field by post start date. Other essential criteria include: - demonstrated interest in the project topics and research questions; - strong and creative analytical skills; - proven experience in handling very large, fine-grained datasets relating to individuals and firms (this may include include web/text elements); - advanced knowledge of relevant quantitative methods using Python, R or Stata; - the ability to work independently, without close supervision; - excellent organisational and communication skills. At post-doc level you should also have: - experience of using open source software tools such as Git/GitHub to a high standard; - a track record of executing and writing up independent research; - the ability to author / co-author papers of refereed journal quality. We are hiring at either post-doc or pre-do! c level. At pre-doc level, the position would suit someone who is considering applying to a quantitative PhD in economics, economic geography, sociology or similar, as well as people wanting hands-on research experience before embarking on a research career.

What we offer

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

Job Ref: B04-03468
Closing Date: 14-Apr-2023 – 23:59 (UK time)

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