Research Fellow

Location: Stirling Campus

Contract type: Fixed term for 48 months

The post

We are looking for skilled and enthusiastic quantitative social scientists to join the ESRC-funded Centre for Collaboration in Community Connectedness. This position will play a key role in developing the data, methods and evidence on community participation in the UK, working across the Centre’s activities.

The Centre’s Data and Methods unit, led by Professor Alasdair Rutherford, provides a methodological core, developing innovative data and methods and new measures for understanding the scale and impacts of community connectedness. Current data infrastructure on community connectedness includes a range of universal survey measures (Community Life Survey, Understanding Society), surveys developed for understanding the impact of specific interventions (Pride in Place and Life Chances survey developed for the evaluation of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund), administrative data(organisational registers, voting records, grant data), indices (Multiple Deprivation, Community Needs, London Civic Strength) and mapping tools (Understory; Emergency Planning Tool). Making sense of these resources, their strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, is a major challenge for policy makers, community practitioners and citizens.

Ongoing limitations in coverage, methodology, and level of detail holdback our understanding of community connectedness. This Unit will engage extensively with partners to co-produce recommendations for change, and co-develop a new, more cohesive, and systematic measurement framework for community connection. This work is closely linked to work across the Centre, to ensure co-ownership and that data measures benefit not only policy makers and researchers, but also communities.

This is an opportunity to be involved in cutting-edge research into community participation, while developing skills and experience in new methods and data, within a large multidisciplinary research centre. The post holder will work under the supervision of Professor Alasdair Rutherford in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling. The role will also involve collaboration with researchers at the universities of Sheffield Hallam, Queens University Belfast, London Metropolitan University and a wide range of community partners.

Description of Duties

• Reviewing existing data, measures and methods for measuring community participation
• Accessing, cleaning and preparing data for analysis
• Operationalising the measures of community participation in the data
• Estimation of statistical models
• Production of outputs, including tables and visualisations, of the analysis

Essential Criteria

• Completed, or near-completion, of a quantitative PhD in social science or other relevant discipline, or equivalent experience
• Experience of statistical modelling of large datasets
• Experience of using statistical software (such as Stata, R, or other)
• Interest in the third sector, volunteering and/or community participation

For further information, including a full description of duties, essential criteria and details on how to apply, please see Vacancy details | University of Stirling

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