Senior Research Fellow (Evaluation)

King’s College London is an internationally renowned university delivering exceptional education and world-leading research. The University is dedicated to driving positive and sustainable change in society and realising our mission of making the world a better place.

The Strategic Vision 2029 looks forward to King’s College London’s 200th anniversary in 2029 and sets out ambitious plans in five key areas:

• Educating the next generation of change-makers

• Challenging ideas and driving change through research

• Giving back to society through meaningful service

• Working with our local communities in London

• Fostering global citizens with an international perspective

As part of the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy, the Policy Institute at King’s combine the rigour of academia with the agility of a consultancy and the connectedness of a think tank.

This role sits within the Evidence Development and Incubation Team (EDIT), a dedicated evaluation specialist team within the Policy Institute. EDIT partners with government departments, public bodies, charities and other organisations to understand the impact of their work. Our activities include:

• Designing and delivering impact evaluations to assess the impacts of interventions on key outcomes, using experimental and quasi-experimental approaches

• Conducting implementation and process evaluations to explore how interventions operate in practice and how they are experienced by those involved.

• Supporting organisations to develop robust internal evaluation capacity, including the systems, skills and processes needed to embed evaluation in their work.

Beyond individual projects, EDIT advocates for the use of evidence in policy and practice, and works closely with members of the What Works Network to strengthen the wider evaluation ecosystem and promote the adoption of evidence-based interventions. See more at: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/about/edit

About the role

We are seeking a Senior Research Fellow to join and help lead the Evidence Development and Incubation Team (EDIT), within the Policy Institute. The Policy Institute addresses complex policy and practice challenges with rigorous research, academic expertise and analysis focused on improving outcomes. EDIT focuses on designing robust, pragmatic evaluations of complex social programmes, combining academic rigour with agility and pragmatism.

This role is an exciting opportunity to work with a high-performing team in a fast-past research environment, to deliver evaluations with real-world impacts. We are seeking to appoint a Senior Research Fellow to lead on evaluations of social and economic programmes. At present the team focuses on education and youth, homelessness, social justice and inclusion; we anticipate that the SRF would be positioned to drive forward our work in labour market and welfare evaluations, but we are open to a candidate who will build their own portfolio of research and evaluation projects across areas that are of interest to them, which could include the above, health, youth violence reduction, communities, or other domains.

We deliver mixed methods evaluations, combining quantitative and quasi-experimental analysis, Randomised Controlled Trials, online and phone surveying, interviews, focus groups, and cost analysis. We also conduct capacity-building work, helping organisations develop their own evaluation approach. The successful candidate will need to be a skilled quantitative researcher with end-to-end experience running RCTs and a range of quasi-experimental designs, and an ongoing interest in developing their research skills.

The Senior Research Fellow will provide leadership, guidance and supervision to junior colleagues to ensure projects are delivered to the required standard of quality and timeliness. The Senior Research Fellow will also be expected to secure and lead their own portfolio of evaluation projects, and will work with the Director and colleagues to successfully compete for sole source and competitive opportunities for this work.

They will be an innovative, robust and pragmatic quantitative evaluator, a skilled project manager, and a strong written and verbal communicator with a demonstrated commitment to evidence-based policy and conducting research with real world impacts.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), but part-time arrangements (0.6FTE or above) will be considered, and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

• PhD qualified in relevant subject area, or equivalent professional experience (a PhD is equivalent to 3-5 years of work in a research capacity)
• Research or practitioner experience of a relevant policy domain, particularly employment support.
• Demonstrated skills in the following areas: (a) Design and analysis of RCTs and quasi-experimental designs such as difference-in-differences, (b) Survey design, administration and validation in real-world settings (i.e. schools, difficult-to-reach participants) where the survey is being used to collect outcome measures for evaluation, (c) Quantitative data analysis using the R statistics package, including data management, specification of different analytical models, randomisation, statistical matching, power calculations, panel datasets, multiple comparison adjustments, missing data analysis and imputation methods
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to communicate effectively with funders, delivery partners and collaborators, both in person and in writing
• Experience leading complex research or evaluation projects, from project inception through to production of deliverables, including specifying impact evaluation methods, monitoring delivery of evaluation activities, monitoring and mitigating risks, oversight and allocation of junior researchers, analysis production and/or quality assurance, and maintaining a strong relationship with funders and stakeholders.
• Ability to work flexibly on emerging priorities, across multiple projects, to tight deadlines
• Track record of securing research or consultancy funding, including preparing competitive or sole supplier bids and working with colleagues and (prospective) funders to land projects
• Experience or training in conducting economic/cost analysis as part of a mixed-methods evaluation.

Further information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

This post is subject to Disclosure and Barring Service clearances.

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