Research Fellow in Anti-Autocratic Messaging

Hours: Full-time, 37.5 hours per week

Location: Hybrid / Brighton, United Kingdom

Contract Type: fixed term, for 18 months

Expected Interview date: Week Commencing 21 September 2026

Expected start date: 01 October 2026

About the role

NEWREPUBLIC is a research project funded by the European Research Council. It will investigate two urgent questions of our times: what ideas animate anti-autocratic movements, and how effective are these ideas as messages for persuading and mobilising against autocracy? As the Research Fellow in Anti-Autocratic Messaging, you will play a central role in that project alongside the principal investigator and another research fellow. This 18-month position will supplement the project’s existing capacity at a critical stage in its work. The project involves five or more surveys with built-in experiments, fielded across two or more African countries. You will work closely with the principal investigator to design two or more of those surveys and experiments, place them online, and analyse the results. You will co-author papers stemming from this research, for publication in the most highly-regarded political science journals. More widely, you will be pivotal to the success of NEWREPUBLIC, with opportunities to shape the project’s direction and to play a key role in translating academic findings into impact — presenting at conferences, co-leading policy seminars, and co-convening workshops. This is a hybrid role, with twice-weekly on-campus presence as the norm, details to be agreed.

You, and NEWREPUBLIC, will be located in the Politics Department, which also houses the world-leading Centre for the Study of Corruption. NEWREPUBLIC has close ties to this centre, alongside Sussex’s Institute for Development Studies, which is consistently ranked first in the world in the QS World Rankings, and the School for Progressive Futures. You will also receive proactive support oriented towards early-career researchers through the Sussex Researcher School.

About you

The ideal candidate will want to put the animating ideas of anti-autocratic movements, and the effectiveness of those ideas as messages, at the heart of their research agenda, for the duration of the project, and for years to come.

• You will have a PhD (awarded or about to be awarded) in political science or a closely related subject.
• You will have a track record of publications in highly-ranked peer-reviewed journals, commensurate with career-stage, which utilise advanced quantitative methods.
• You will have expertise in survey experiment design and analysis, and in public opinion analysis, including factor analysis. You will be fluent in Stata or R.
• You will have expertise in political messaging, political behaviour, discourse studies, and/or ideology studies.
• It would be advantageous if you had expertise in autocratic politics, democratic resilience, and/or anti-autocratic movements in Africa.
• It would be advantageous if you were fluent in French, Luganda, Portuguese, and/or another language spoken in Africa, so that you can contribute to wide project duties.

About our School

Please find further information regarding the School of Law, Politics and Sociology on our website.

Why work here

Find out more about our reward and benefits package.

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Further Key Information

Please contact Dan Paget, d.paget@sussex.ac.uk, for informal enquiries.

The University requires that work undertaken for the University is performed in the UK.

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