Senior Research Fellow (Evaluation) - Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

Senior Research Fellow (Evaluation) - Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

About us

Kings 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 Kings College Londons 200thanniversary 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 Kings 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:

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.