Research Associate of Slavery in War (Information Science / Data Management)

In 2025, the King’s College London and University of Nottingham will launch the new Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War, funded by the Leverhulme Trust for up to £10 million over ten years. For more information please see the announcement of this initiative.

About the role

You will bring information science and data management expertise into the new Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War.  The new Centre for Research on Slavery in War is structured around four interconnected research strands—(Re)conceptualising, Understanding, Forecasting and Tackling—and aims for far-reaching insights that transform global responses to modern slavery in conflict settings.

The role is based within the Understanding strand, in the Department of Digital Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. The Understanding strand will map the distribution, prevalence and forms of slavery across diverse conflict zones in the modern world, building a new analytical paradigm to understand the phenomenon of slavery in war. Key research questions include: how has slavery manifested in war? How can diverse datasets be synthesised and analysed to research and address slavery in war? By working across the Centre’s datasets and using data analytics and machine learning, this Centre strand will build a blended data resource that can help to gauge the prevalence, forms, and distribution of slavery in wars.

This is a full-time (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an a fixed-term contract until 31st October 2027.

About you 

Essential criteria

• PhD qualified in relevant subject area (especially data science, library/information science or digital humanities)*
• Capable in dataset scoping, data audit and database analysis
• Ability in requirement analysis on behalf of Centre stakeholders and collaborating institutions
• Ability to build data dictionaries and controlled vocabularies
• Knowledge and understanding of developing workflows for historical data capture and entry.
• Project or other experience of effective communication and liaison between the technical team and domain experts (historians and political scientists)
• Understanding of the linguistic and language complexities of dealing with data from multiple historical periods and language roots
• Ability to conduct individual and collaborative research projects. With demonstrable experience in writing up research work for academic publication and the ability to effectively communicate research and data clearly to both public and academic audiences.

Desirable criteria

• Capacity to continually update knowledge and understanding in their field or specialism
• Ability to translate knowledge of advances in the subject area into research activity
• Experience with historical, humanitarian, or conflict-related datasets
• Experience in inter-disciplinary teams
• Conceptual familiarity or experience with AI enhanced workflows 

*Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

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