Professor and Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies

IOE is UCL Faculty of Education and Society.

Founded in 1902, IOE has been shaping policy and helping government, organisations and individuals navigate a changing society for the last 120 years. We embrace collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just, and have been ranked number one for education every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The Social Research Institute is one of the leading centres for social research in the UK.

Our mission as a department is to change the world for the better through world-class social science research and education

The Centre for Longitudinal Studies is a world-leading centre for research, scientific development and operational management of a unique series of nationally representative longitudinal studies that collect critical data for researchers, policymakers and practitioners within and beyond the UK.

About the role

As Director, you will be responsible for the strategic leadership of the Centre, communicating a vision for its future, driving its strategic direction, including to identify new areas of development and innovation for the Centre, to develop a strategy for future funding, and having overall responsibility for all Centre staff.

You will be a champion of the CLS cohorts, communicating their value to a wide range of scientific and non-scientific audiences, nationally and internationally. In your role as the leader of a major social science data infrastructure, you will engage with, and be alert to the needs of, current and future data and evidence users as well the cohort study participants.

The role is a UCL professorship in SRI and it is expected that 0.5 FTE of the role of CLS Director will be funded through the ESRC CLS Resource Centre grant. In the remaining 0.5 FTE, you will be expected to conduct and publish outstanding substantive academic research.

About you

Holding a PhD or equivalent in a social science or related discipline, you will have a world-leading record of publications based on quantitative analysis of longitudinal data, including CLS cohorts or other data with similar characteristics.

Proven leadership experience indicating suitability to lead large, complex programmes involving multiple partners across organisations and scientific disciplines is essential.

Your application form should address all the person specification points and should clearly demonstrate how your skills and experience meet each of the criteria.

It is important that the criteria are clearly numbered and that you provide a response to each one.

This post is available from January 2026.

What we offer

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

Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits to find out more.

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.

Our faculty holds an Athena SWAN Silver award, in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality.

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