Communications Manager (0.8 FTE)

About us:

Our Centre for Society and Mental Health is a cross-Faculty initiative between the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy (SSPP) and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN).

Our Centre entre aims to better understand the complex interrelationships between society and mental health as a basis for developing effective policies and practices to promote better mental health, with a commitment to:

-  Ensure that the impact of social context is central to how we understand mental health;

-  Work in partnership with affected communities.

We are recruiting a Communications Manager to lead diverse and engaging communications, build meaningful partnerships and promote the Centre’s work to a wide range of audiences. If you are passionate about communicating impactful mental health research, the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health would love to hear from you.

About the role:

This role focuses on leading and delivering high-quality communications to promote the Centre’s research, activities, and impact across a wide range of audiences. The postholder is responsible for creating engaging and accessible content, including news stories, blogs, newsletters, lay summaries, and multimedia outputs such as animations and video. They will also support the development of press releases in collaboration with Faculty colleagues and coordinate key outputs such as the Centre’s research briefs series.

A key aspect of the role is managing the Centre’s digital presence. This includes overseeing and growing social media channels—particularly BlueSky and LinkedIn, as well as refreshing and maintaining the Centre’s website to ensure content remains current and aligned with the organisation’s tone and ethos.

The postholder plays an important role in planning and delivering events, including seminar series, primers, and ad hoc activities, ensuring they are well-organised and effectively promoted.

The role also requires meaningful engagement with experts-by-experience and affected communities, ensuring inclusive and collaborative approaches. A strong commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion underpins all aspects of the work, with active contributions to related initiatives and charter commitments.

This is a part time post (28 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 30/04/2028.

About you:

Essential criteria

• A first degree or equivalent experience.
• Excellent communication skills, including experience of promoting and disseminating research findings to a range of audiences.
• Experience of supporting and coordinating research-related engagement activities, including development of briefs and similar dissemination outputs.
• Experience of organising events such as workshops, seminars and conferences.
• Experience of website maintenance, editing and content creation using Contensis or similar content management systems.
• Experience of creating accessible content for social media channels and using content creation software such as Canva or AdobePro.
• Demonstrable commitment/interest in supporting research to have real-world impact and influence beyond academia.
• Proven consistent ability to meet tight individual and group deadlines and to manage one’s own workload through effective prioritising, time management and organisational skills.

Desirable criteria

• Demonstrated ability to communicate challenging potentially upsetting content in a sensitive and accessible way.
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with research teams and people with lived experience, including good interpersonal skills to develop and maintain effective working relationships.
• An interest in the area of society and mental health.
• Relevant previous experience of supporting interdisciplinary research projects.
• Good science writing skills.

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