Research Fellow in Community Wellbeing

About the role

This fifty-month post will enable you to explore the development and implementation of new approaches to workforce sustainability across staff in primary care and maternity services as part of a larger multi-method study across England.

We want to work with a great qualitative researcher, who has excellent practical, analytic, and conceptual skills. You will be working as part of a friendly and supportive multi-disciplinary team including academics and national project partners. You will be based in the Implementation and Innovation Research Group (IIR) at Northumbria University, working primarily with Tim Rapley.

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, you will support the delivery of qualitative work on the NIHR HSDR funded Partnership for workforce sustainability in under-served areas research project by undertaking research activity, writing up research work for publication, and collaborating with project partners. The qualitative work will involve interviews, focus groups and observation with front line and managerial staff and service, using populations over multiple sites across England. Some of the fieldwork will be conducted in person, so at times there will be travel to different parts of England, some will also be conducted remotely.

For further information see the job description.

This role is fixed-term, full time, for 50 months starting in August 2025.

About the team

The study is a collaboration between university partners – Newcastle University, Birmingham University, Northumbria University, Oxford University and York University - alongside a project partner – the Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board.

You will be embedded in the Implementation and Innovation Research Group (IIR) - a small friendly cross departmental group between Nursing, Midwifery and Health and Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing at Northumbria University. IIRs work ranges from initiation, scoping, and development of novel ideas for service, therapeutic and care innovations, to feasibility studies, pilot, and full trials with embedded process evaluations, as well as the scaling up and scaling out of evidence-based interventions. IIR works with key health and social care stakeholders to develop innovative, individualised, community-based and organisational solutions to problems of implementation and knowledge mobilisation through applied research. Through high quality research, we develop theories, tools, and methodologies as well as interventions to support implementation and knowledge mobilisation in practice.

You will be formally based in the Department of Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Northumbria University, Coach Lane campus, one of five departments within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences.

About you

To be successful in the role you will have: 

• Excellent practical, analytic, and conceptual skills in multi-method qualitative research.
• Knowledge of contemporary debates and challenges relating to workforce issues in the provision of health services, and /or implementation in health and/or social care is essential, and knowledge of debates and challenges relating to Primary health care and /or Maternity services is desirable. 

Ability to travel for purpose of data collection to various locations in the UK is essential.

You will hold a PhD, have submitted your PhD or be about to submit your PhD in the next two months, or have equivalent experience, in a health and/or social science related discipline.

Further information is available in the person specification.

If you would like an informal discussion about the role, please contact Professor Tim Rapley - tim.rapley@northumbria.ac.uk

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