Postdoctoral Research Associate in Neurodiversity

The Department

Durham University’s Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding, in conjunction with the Psychology department (via the Centre for Neurodiversity & Development), seeks to appoint a talented individual to a fixed-term Research Fellowship.

The Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding (GCCS) launched in September 2025, building on the work of a decade-plus Contextual Safeguarding Programme and a team that has been at the forefront of reforming safeguarding systems to promote the welfare of young people in places where they spend their time. The GCCS is an interdisciplinary Centre based in Durham’s Sociology Department with direct integration with various departments across the four faculties of the University – including collaborative working with the Centre for Neurodiversity & Development. It works to: transform how societies understand and deliver services that safeguard young people b eyond their homes; create systems that look beyond the capacity of parents to protect children; and build sustainable partnerships in which safeguarding is truly everybody's business.

GCCS is committed to a radical transformation in how safeguarding is conceptualised, studied, and practiced, and by whom. Over the coming years, GCCS will achieve this by building a critical interdisciplinary effort to cement an emergent field of research. This Research Fellow role will directly contribute to this interdisciplinary effort by working primarily within the GCCS team but being structurally embedded within the Centre for Neurodiversity & Development within the Department of Psychology.

Founded in 1952, the Department of Psychology is consistently ranked as one of the best in the UK with an outstanding reputation for excellence in teaching, research, and student employability. The department is committed to creating and maintaining a research environment that spans the entire breadth of psychology. Currently the department’s research falls within three groupings: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science, and Quantitative Social Psychology. The Research Fellow will be part of the Developmental Science grouping and will join the Centre for Neurodiversity and Development, which includes researchers c onducting a wide range of studies in the field of neurodiversity, using multi-methods approaches and embedding lived experience insights into its research.

The Role

The postholder will join the GCCS team to consider the wider application of Contextual Safeguarding and associated themes via a psychology and neurodiversity lens. Crucially, the postholder will bring together the fields of neurodiversity research and contextual safeguarding to advance this area of investigation and conduct research of real-world and applied significance. Questions such as contextual safeguarding within an educational setting for neurodivergent youth may be especially relevant here. However, the overall programme of research will be shaped collaboratively upon appointment with the GCCS and the Centre for Neurodiversity & Development. We welcome applications from those with research interests that align with the Centre for Neurodiversity & Development, and Developmental Science. We are particularly keen to hear from mixed-methods researchers with experience of combining qualitative and quantitative insights in their research on aspects of neurodiversity and neurodivergence. Research involving neurodivergent youth would be of benefit in this role, as would experience of embedding participatory research methods within studies. Indeed, experience of working collaboratively with teams across academia, on multi-disciplinary projects, and with community partners would be a clear benefit for this post.

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