Evaluation & Learning Associate in Cambridge

Embedded Evaluation Role with East Yorkshire Place Partner

Reports To: Dr Kara Danks, Lead (Kara Danks Consultancy).

Engagement Basis: Self-employed freelance contract (with Kara Danks Consultancy).

Contract Duration: 9 months (July 2026 – March 2027), with a one-month probationary period.

Pay/Day Rate: £182 per day with 126 billable days across the contract = £22,932 actual (£44,226 FTE equivalent). Day rate is inclusive of an approximate 30% freelance uplift reflecting the absence of PAYE benefits.

Working Pattern: Part time - equivalent to approximately 3.5 days per week (flexible scheduling around client needs, agreed in advance).

Base Location: Hybrid – primarily remote working combined with some in-person presence across East Yorkshire and occasional meetings in the wider Yorkshire & Humber. Monthly evaluation team meeting in or around North East region, where possible.

Closing Date & interview: 19th June – expected interview date Friday 26th June.

Background & Role: Kara Danks Consultancy has been appointed as the Evaluation and Learning Partner for the East Yorkshire Place Partner (EYPP), a Sport England-funded place-based initiative operating across Goole, Bridlington and Withernsea. EYPP is one of a network of ninety-two Sport England national Place Partners and they are building on foundations laid as one of the original twelve Local Delivery Pilots. EYPP stand out as evaluation and learning practice trailblazers amongst the Place Partners – they are at the forefront of developing effective and innovative embedded evaluation and learning practices.

The evaluation and learning approach is deliberately non-traditional. It is an embedded, participatory evaluation grounded in systems thinking and realist evaluation principles, asking: what is changing within the system, why, and for whom? We are looking for an Evaluation & Learning Associate to work as an integral part of a small team, bringing genuine intellectual curiosity and relational skill to an exciting, complex and rewarding programme of work.

This exciting and varied role is designed to build expertise in complexity-consistent realist evaluation, participatory systems methodology and AI-augmented applied research. You will receive direct mentorship from the Lead Researcher, opportunities to engage with a national network around place-based system change evaluation and learning, and co-author published outputs where appropriate.

Purpose of the Role: The Evaluation & Learning Associate will work as the embedded day-to-day presence of the evaluation within the EYPP core team. You will combine rigorous fieldwork with genuine relational practice - building trust with partners, contributing to the team’s Culture of Curiosity and helping to translate emerging evidence into learning that the programme can use in real time. This is a role for someone who enjoys participatory research and working relationally. You will carry substantial responsibility for primary data collection across qualitative, quantitative and participatory methods, and you will be closely supported in developing the analytical and facilitative skills that complexity-consistent evaluation demands.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Embedded Fieldwork & Relationship Building: Attend EYPP team weekly online reflection spaces acting as a trusted, visible presence within the team. Build and sustain trust-based working relationships with core team members, place-based partners, VCSE organisations, local authority officers and community stakeholders across East Yorkshire Place Partner focus areas. Contribute actively - not passively - to reflective discussions, surfacing emerging themes, offering emerging insights and asking questions prompted by the evaluation data to access the ‘why’ and ‘how’. Maintain a live contextual timeline, tracking policy shifts, leadership changes, organisational dynamics and external events that shape how the programme operates.
• Primary Data Collection: Lead the scheduling, conduct and transcription of stakeholder interviews across two main rounds (approximately 15–20 interviews per round), using topic guides grounded in realist context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) thinking. Deliver structured ‘story of change’ conversations with programme partners, stakeholders and community organisations (approximately 20–30 contributions across the contract). Administer collaboration and partnership-measurement scales twice during the contract (baseline and mid-point), including network mapping elements. Support the distribution, data capture and initial cleaning of any complementary surveys, questionnaires or other data collection methods during the contract. Ensure all fieldwork is conducted to high ethical standards, including informed consent, data protection (UK GDPR), anonymisation and appropriate safeguarding practice.
• Analysis & Sensemaking: Contribute to qualitative analysis using realist and thematic approaches, supporting the development of CMO configurations and explanatory accounts. Support the Lead Researcher in producing systems visualisations - including force field analyses, causal loop maps and CMO configuration maps - and co-facilitate their use in sensemaking sessions. Produce quarterly learning syntheses that feed progressively into the annual Process Learning Report, ensuring findings are grounded in evidence and appropriately triangulated. Support the Systems Maturity Matrix (SMM) workstream through continuous evidence tagging against the nine Sport England system conditions and co-facilitation of the SMM reflection workshop. Use approved AI tools (Claude Opus and the illumEval platform) as process augmenters - always under human oversight, with findings and conclusions determined by the evaluation team rather than the tool.
• Learning, Communication & Capacity Building: Co-produce creative and accessible outputs, e.g., visual insight summaries, infographics, story maps, short videos, facilitated workshops - designed to help partners engage with and use evaluation evidence in their own practice. Support the EYPP team and wider partners to strengthen their own evaluation literacy, including contributing to coaching and facilitation of reflective practice and evaluative mindset/skills. Contribute to materials that translate programme learning into formats which resonate locally, co-produced with EYPP and partners where appropriate. Where opportunities arise and agreed with the Lead Researcher, co-author conference abstracts, blogs or peer-reviewed outputs emerging from the work.
• Programme & Professional Conduct: Maintain clear, accurate records of fieldwork activity, consent, data handling and reflective notes, using agreed project management and data governance protocols. Attend regular one-to-one check-ins with the Lead Researcher for supervision, development planning and strategic alignment. Operate with the balance of collaborative working and independent evaluation judgement that embedded evaluation demands - acting as both learning partner and critical friend. Represent Kara Danks Consultancy professionally in all interactions with the EYPP team, partners and wider stakeholders.