Summary

We are the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. We champion historic places, helping people understand, value and care for them.

Historic England have a fantastic opportunity for you to join us as our Historic Environment Researcher, Climate Change pilot study.

This is a Full Time, 6 months Fixed-Term Contract.

National £38,067 pro-rata

GL+ £40,984 pro-rata

The location of this role is National where we offer hybrid working, you will be based in one of our following offices and from home - Newcastle, York, Manchester, Birmingham, Swindon, Bristol, Portsmouth (Fort Cumberland) and Cambridge. 

We offer a wide benefits package including a competitive pension scheme starting at 28.97% employer contributions, a generous 28 days holiday, corporate discounts, free entry into English Heritage sites across the country and development opportunities to ensure you achieve your goals.

To view our full range of benefits please follow the link here.

What you will be doing

As our Historic Environment Researcher, you will help local authorities prepare for and manage climate change driven impacts to historic assets using prototype decision‑making frameworks and toolkits. You will be responsible for working with a small group of local authorities to pilot their use.

The design, development and testing of the prototype decision-making frameworks and toolkits will be based on the main source of information about historic assets held by local authorities: their Historic Environment Record (HER) datasets. You will ensure that the framework/tool-kit products are user-focused, realistic in their resource requirements and follow a cyclical model of planning, identifying, analysing, taking action and monitoring effect.

You will have excellent knowledge and understanding of data and information management, including data standards and GIS. You will have outstanding analytical skills, aligned with a strong commitment and understanding of partnership working.

The project will build on recent collaborative work between University College London (UCL) and Historic England to (1) develop a climate hazard vocabulary for heritage and (2) scope hazard resources relevant to safeguarding heritage sites against the impacts of climate change, including a data catalogue detailing datasets and tools available now.

This research post relates to activity within Historic England’s Corporate Plan and Climate Change Strategy, and to commitments made in the Government’s third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3).

You will need to work collaboratively across Historic England departments and with external partners to ensure the effective development of decision-making frameworks and toolkits.

Who we are looking for

• Relevant higher education qualification

• Experience of undertaking data analysis and interpretation

• Experience of identifying new partnership opportunities and nurturing these

• Strong analytical skills with the ability to collect, organise, analyse and disseminate information

• Excellent database and GIS skills including retrieval, exports, digitisation and analysis

• Excellent knowledge and understanding of data and information management, analysis and data standards

Please note your application will be scored and assessed against the above criteria.

We are an equal opportunity employer which values diversity and inclusion. If you have a disability or neurodiversity, we would be happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to the job with you. Having just won the Gold Award from MIND, we also recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance.

We are an inclusive employer and believe that flexible working options are for everyone. We want to make sure our working arrangements don’t prevent anyone from joining us because of their personal circumstances. We also want to provide you with the best balance in your home and work life that we can.

We are open to considering options including job sharing, part-time working, compressed hours working and different working locations, including hybrid working. Please visit our jobs pages or contact us to find out more.

Why work for Historic England

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for everyone. Diversity helps us to perform better and attract more people to support our work. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds.

We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates and candidates with disabilities as they are underrepresented within Historic England at this level.

Historic England want all of our candidates to shine in the recruitment process. Please tell us what we can do to make sure you can show us your very best self. You can contact us by email at recruitmentTeam@Historicengland.org.uk if you have any recruitment queries. 

At Historic England we use a hiring system called Applied. Applied is a behavioural science-backed recruitment platform that reduces bias, improves quality of hire and increases diversity. We do not use CV application for the majority of our hiring processes. You will answer a selection of questions that allow our hiring teams to test your skills and suitability for the role.

To ensure a fair and inclusive recruitment process for everyone the use of AI or automated tools is not permitted.

Provisional interview dates: 25th June 2025 in person - Manchester

Please follow the link for a full copy of the Job Description –

https://cms.historicengland.org.uk/media/rhml55dw/historic-environment-researcher-climate-change-pilot-study.odt