Senior Research Officer

The Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis (CeMPA) is hosted at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), a flagship department within the University of Essex, internationally recognised for excellence and expertise in quantitative social science and research methodologies. CeMPA is at the frontier of microsimulation modelling, with applications to tax-benefit analysis, life-course analysis, and complexity economics.

CeMPA’s research is critical to understanding the social distribution of life chances, through the analysis of the mechanisms that explain the entrenchment of social and health inequalities over time, and the short-, medium- and long-term effects of policies.

CeMPA’s research on distributional issues, from tax and benefit systems to family, gender, health, wellbeing, and population change, is focused around two tools developed over the years and offered open source to the scientific community, with a wide range of models and applications: the static tax-benefit microsimulation platform EUROMOD, now jointly developed with the European Commission, and the dynamic microsimulation platform JAS-mine. Together, they cover all areas in social science microsimulation, from tax-benefit to dynamic microsimulation and agent-based modelling.

Duties of the Role

The person appointed will contribute to the static and dynamic microsimulation models developed at CeMPA, and exploit them to pursue research objectives concerning the short, medium, and long term consequences of public policies on individual health and economic outcomes, and the resulting health and economic inequalities, also in light of major societal trends such as population ageing, immigration, and the green transition. Key areas of interest are distributional issues (economic and health inequalities, socio-economic determinants of health), the economics of ageing, social policy (ex-ante and ex-post evaluation, macro-challenges to the welfare state), and life course analysis (including intergenerational redistribution).

You will also help to produce research outputs for publication and disseminate the result of research and scholarship through appropriate activities inside and outside academia, such as participating in relevant national and international conferences and engagement events. In addition, you will have the opportunity to co-author papers and contribute to the development of the CeMPA research agenda.

A full list of duties and responsibilities can be found within the job pack.

Qualifications and Skills required

Applicants will hold a relevant doctoral level degree in Economics, Sociology, Social Policy or equivalent professional experience or practice, or be close to completion of PhD studies.

Experience with empirical analysis, household surveys and software packages are essential. In addition, you will possess evidence of a developing research agenda.

This is a fixed-term, full-time post for two years in line with the grant funding.

At the University of Essex, internationalism and diversity is central to who we are and what we do. We are committed to being a cosmopolitan, internationally oriented university that is welcoming to staff and students from all countries, faiths and backgrounds, where you can find the world in one place.

Please use the 'Apply' button to read further information about this role including the full job description and person specification which outlines the full duties, skills, qualifications and experience needed for this role. You will also find details of how to make your application here. Our website http://www.essex.ac.uk contains more information about the University of Essex. If you have a disability and would like information in a different format, please email resourcing@essex.ac.uk. 

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