Research & Strategy Analyst

This is a graduate-level role at Emotive Strategy Studio, part of Source Nine Strategic Insights, working directly with the Founder to deliver high-quality research and strategy projects for brands and agencies including TUI, McCain, Molton Brown, adam & eve DDB, the7stars, and Havas. You'll be using a distinctive approach to understanding people called the Empathy Framework (winner of the 2025 MRS Award for Research Innovation of the Year), grounded in the latest behavioural and cognitive science.

Day-to-day, you'll design research projects, conduct analysis using AI-assisted workflows, build audience and behavioural insights, and write strategic reports that solve real business problems. This is a rare opportunity to do graduate-level strategy work, of a kind usually only available in London, here in Cornwall. You will work from St. Agnes in Cornwall with occasional remote working. Starting Salary £28,000 per annum.

Purpose of the Role

The purpose of the role is to support the delivery of research and strategy work for agency and brand clients. You will work alongside the Founder to take a client brief, define the problem behaviourally and emotionally, design and execute research projects, collect and analyse data using the Empathy Framework and supporting theory, and produce reports and strategic outputs that provide exceptional clarity whilst telling powerful stories. The work is intellectually demanding. It requires the ability to hold complexity without collapsing it, to think rigorously about why people do what they do, and to translate that thinking into clear, useful, written outputs.

This role will give you direct exposure to a way of thinking about people and brands that is becoming increasingly influential in the industry, and it will equip you with skills that are highly transferable to a wide range of strategic careers.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Reading and absorbing client briefs, agency documentation, audience data, and supporting research; building an accurate understanding of the problem to be solved.
• Defining the business problem in behavioural and emotional terms using the Empathy Framework.
• Designing research projects: identifying what data is needed, where it can be found, and how it should be analysed.
• Conducting AI-assisted desk research and analysis using tools such as Claude and other large language models.
• Qualitative Research: Over time you’ll be trained to design and carry out interviews, focus groups and ethnographies.
• Building audience profiles, emotional needs analyses, and predictive models of behaviour drawing on the framework and its supporting evidence base.
• Producing written outputs: reports, slide decks, and other strategic documents that clients use in their pitches and strategy work.
• Maintaining accurate documentation of project work and methodology.

Tools and systems you will use:

• AI assistants (Claude and others) for research, analysis, and writing support.
• The Empathy Framework and its supporting knowledge base.
• Google Workspace.
• Project documentation and version control practices.
• Various web-based research tools and data sources.

Training and Development

What Skills and Experience will this Opportunity Provide?

• Working knowledge of the Empathy Framework, an MRS-award-winning approach to understanding people.
• Practical fluency in active inference, the theory of constructed emotion, and predictive processing as applied to human behaviour.
• Advanced AI-assisted research and analysis skills, working with tools like Claude as part of a professional workflow.
• Project management experience across multiple concurrent strategy projects.
• Strategic writing skills: producing reports, decks, and analytical outputs to a professional standard.
• Direct exposure to how the strategy and research function works inside brands and agencies.
• Experience contributing to pitch work for major clients.
• The ability to translate complex theory into practical commercial outputs.

For the right candidate, there is potential for the role to develop into a permanent position at the end of the 12 months.

Support Available

• Weekly one-to-one meetings with the Founder.
• On-the-job training in the Empathy Framework, supporting theory, and project methodology.
• Shadowing on client work before taking on independent workstreams.
• Ongoing mentorship throughout the placement.

The Benefits

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays.
• Hybrid working pattern: office-based during initial training, then home working on Mondays and Fridays with in-office working Tuesday to Thursday.
• A dedicated equipment budget for the home working setup.
• Professional development budget for relevant training, conferences, or qualifications.

About You (Person Specification)

Skills

• Strong analytical thinking. You can take a complex problem, break it down, identify what matters, and work through it systematically.
• Excellent Problem Solving. You can think about your thinking, variables and their relationships. You can work things out.
• Strong written communication. You can produce clear, well-structured prose that conveys complex ideas without losing the reader.
• Ability to read and absorb dense material quickly: research papers, client documents, data reports.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the willingness to push through when the answer isn't obvious.

Preferred

• Familiarity with AI tools such as Claude (including Claude Code, CoWork), ideally with some experience using them for analysis and/or tool building.
• Some experience with research methods (qualitative or quantitative) at university or in placement work.

Personal Qualities and Attributes

We are looking for someone who:

• Is kind, thoughtful and curious. Thinks carefully about how they think. You notice when you're reasoning poorly, when you're being lazy, when an argument has a hole in it.
• Is genuinely interested in people. Why they do what they do, how they feel, what shapes their behaviour.
• Has good emotional intelligence. You can hold difficult conversations, read situations accurately, and work well with people whose views differ from yours.
• Is resilient and persistent. You don't crumble when the work is hard or when you have to redo something.
• Has intellectual humility. You're willing to be wrong, to update your views, and to push back on your own thinking.
• Cares about the substance of the work, not just the output.

Knowledge

• A working understanding of how to construct an argument, evaluate evidence, and write clearly.
• An interest in psychology, behavioural science, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, or similar fields, even if your degree is in something else.
• Preferred: Some prior exposure to behavioural science, psychology, marketing, strategy, or related disciplines.
• Some familiarity with AI tools and how to work with them effectively.

Prior Experience

You should have prior work experience. We are looking for someone who has worked before university, during university, or on placement, and who understands what it means to hold down a job. This experience demonstrates reliability, professionalism, and the practical skills that come from working alongside other people. Any prior experience in research, strategy, marketing, communications, or related fields will be prioritised but where real passion is present, we can look beyond direct experience to date and see potential instead. The same applies to experience with AI tools. You must have valid right-to-work documents with you for verification if appointed, as copies are not accepted.

About the Company

Emotive Strategy Studio is the brand and strategy arm of Source Nine Strategic Insights, working with leading consumer brands and creative agencies on research and strategy projects. Our clients include TUI, McCain, and Molton Brown on the brand side, and adam & eve DDB, the7stars, and Havas on the agency side. We work with global clients on problems that range from new product strategy to pitch support. What makes us distinctive is our approach. Rather than relying on traditional segmentation or attitudinal research, we use the Empathy Framework, our own model of making sense of people that integrates the latest thinking in behavioural and cognitive science. The Empathy Framework won the MRS Award for Research Innovation of the Year in 2025, recognising it as one of the most significant methodological developments in the research industry. We are based in Cornwall, and this role is a rare opportunity to do the kind of high-end, graduate-level strategy work that is usually only available in London while living and working in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. You will work directly with the Founder, learning the framework and the methodology from someone who has built and continues to develop it, and you will be doing real work for real clients from day one.