Research Fellow and Information Scientist

About IOE

IOE is UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society.

Founded in 1902, IOE has been shaping policy and helping government, organisations and individuals navigate a changing society for the last 120 years. We embrace collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just, and have been ranked number one for education every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

About the Social Research Institute

The Social Research Institute is one of the leading centres for social research in the UK. It is home to seven internationally renowned research units:

• Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• Centre for Time Use Research
• CLOSER
• EPPI-Centre
• Quantitative Social Science
• Social Science Research Unit
• Thomas Coram Research Unit

All of our centres are multidisciplinary, with staff drawn variously from economics, sociology, social policy, demography, psychology, anthropology and social statistics. We promote problem-solving interdisciplinary research on particular themes where we have outstanding scholarship and critical mass, e.g. gender, families, work, inequalities, migration, bio-social interactions.

About the EPPI Centre

The EPPI Centre is a specialist research centre, based in the SSRU, which is committed to informing policy and professional practice with sound evidence. It is involved in two main areas of work:

• Systematic reviews: This includes developing methods for systematic reviews and evidence syntheses, conducting reviews, supporting others to undertake reviews, and providing guidance and training in this area.

• Research use: This includes studying the use/non-use of research evidence in personal, practice and political decision-making, supporting those who wish to find and use research to help solve problems, and providing guidance and training in this area.

You will join the EPPI-Centre and support the information science needs of the Centre. Most of the post is focused on designing search strategies and maintaining multiple evidence surveillance systems for the aforementioned project on living systematic reviews on mental health research, in conjunction with automation tools (Wellcome Trust project).

The other main project that you will be involved in also involves information management and developing search strategies for evidence synthesis projects, mainly within healthcare research, for the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Group. You will be working with another information scientist (Claire Stansfield) and the wider research team, and reporting to James Thomas and Alison O’Mara-Eves.

The job will also involve methodological development within information retrieval for supporting evidence synthesis.

This post is currently funded until March 31st 2026.

Interviews will be held on Tuesday 6th June 2023.

You will have a postgraduate degree or recognised equivalent qualification in a subject relevant to the role in information science or related discipline as well as a PhD or work experience in a research environment in a subject relevant to the role in the social or health sciences which enables your to demonstrate an understanding and knowledge of information retrieval or systematic reviews and contemporary research activities within the field.

You will also have experience of designing and undertaking systematic literature searching to address complex topics within health or social sciences or other related disciplines from conceptualisation to implementation and write-up.

Your application form should address all the person specification points and should clearly demonstrate how your skills and experience meet each of the criteria.

It is important that the criteria are clearly numbered and that you provide a response to each one.

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Additional 5 days’ annual leave purchase scheme
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance

Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits to find out more.

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce.

These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

Our department holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award, in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality.