We are recruiting for a Senior Researcher (Collective Intelligence)!

Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design helps create new ways for communities to use technology to harness their insights, ideas and power to act on the problems that matter to them and create the futures they want. We know well-designed systems can help promote healthy collective action at scale, but too often technology is designed to solve the needs of individuals or large organisations. 

Our mission is to design digital tools, products and processes that allow communities to respond collectively to challenges, and that help public and voluntary sector institutions strengthen trust and collaboration with citizens.  

We work with Nesta’s mission teams and external partners to help them understand where and how collective intelligence approaches can help address the problems they’re working on. We apply collective intelligence design - which brings together insights from diverse groups of people, with new sources of data (such as sensor or mobile phone data) and digital technologies (including AI) - to develop bespoke solutions to those problems. We use rigorous research methods to test, learn and evaluate each solution. 

The Role

We are seeking a Senior Researcher who can help us develop and implement an ambitious research agenda about how to best design for collective intelligence, including the role of AI in supporting human collective intelligence. The function of research in our team is to turn insights about CI design from research into practice, through the development of new tools, products and solutions in real-world contexts. This is a unique opportunity to help shape a research and innovation practice. This role will suit a self-starter with a curious and open mindset, who is comfortable carrying out research in an emerging field.

As Senior Researcher you will lead the delivery of a European research project about enhancing the impact of citizen science. We are seeking candidates with existing operational experience of citizen science methods. You will also be involved in the design and delivery of other research projects that generate evidence about other collective intelligence approaches such as peer-to-peer networks, GIS and earth observation, online deliberation, etc. You will work closely with external implementation partners such as public sector institutions and NGOs using a mixture of traditional and participatory research to create new ways for citizens to use technology to respond collectively to challenges. 

As part of an interdisciplinary team, the Senior Researcher will work with the Centre’s designers and technical lead to analyse cutting edge practice and methods, and then turn these insights into codified frameworks, processes, methods and tools for real-world application. You will also work with colleagues from Nesta’s Mission and Practice teams to design mixed methods projects that help us deliver against our targets to achieve A Fairer Start, A Healthy Life and A Sustainable Future. 

You will be responsible for:

• 50% of this role will be leading the research and policy engagement activities for an EU project about enabling citizen science.

• Evidence synthesis using a variety of traditional and emerging research methods which may include literature review, interviews, horizon scanning, crowdsourcing, design workshops or quantitative techniques.

• Designing and leading the delivery of new programmes of research, where we use real-world experiments to generate evidence about how to best design for collective intelligence. This is likely to involve user research. 

• Keeping up with the latest research and practice in collective intelligence, especially citizen science, and working with the Principal Researcher to proactively suggest how we can use these insights to improve our own research and design projects.

• Building on past CCID research (e.g.Collective Crisis Intelligence, Future of Minds and Machines, Collective Intelligence for Public Problems) to evolve our expertise and understanding of CI design. 

• Writing, reviewing and editing reports and other research outputs such as blogs, case studies and toolkits.

• Communication and dissemination work, which may include leading on new and creative ways to communicate ideas to different audiences through written content and representing CCID at external and internal events.

• Day to day project management, including project planning, budget management, liaising with partners and managing contracts, preparing agendas and coordinating updates.

• Leading the development and organisation of events from small workshops and roundtables to conferences. This will include operational tasks, workshop/event design and content curation.

• Business development, including identifying new opportunities and writing proposals.

Core experience and skills

Subject expertise

• Demonstrable implementation experience with at least one collective intelligence method, citizen science strongly preferred, (others also desirable e.g. crowdmapping, GIS and Earth Observation, crowdsourcing, online and in-person deliberation, peer-2-peer networks, crowd forecasting, etc) and interest in developing skills in others.

• A basic understanding of techniques in data science and AI and how these can be used to complement or enhance collective intelligence. An interest in building this knowledge. 

• Background in a subject related to one of Nesta’s Missions. (Desirable)

Research skills

• Experience with designing and delivering research studies, robust hypothesis-driven experiments and evaluation to measure a project’s impact/success. We are particularly interested in candidates who have experience with action research.

• Ability to deliver rapid reviews of existing evidence, case study analysis and horizon scanning to identify new research and innovation opportunities.

• Demonstrable experience of a range of traditional qualitative research skills including surveys, focus groups, interviews. Candidates with experience of online and digital research methods are preferred. 

• Knowledge and demonstrable experience of quantitative research skills, including statistical data analysis.

• A basic understanding of using digital methods and tools for research (e.g. wikisurveys, mini-surveys, online deliberation tools) and a desire to develop these skills.

Project management and teamwork

• Excellent time management, and able to manage multiple projects and competing priorities

• Experience of navigating complexity and uncertainty, and adapting personal style for a variety of cultural contexts and organisations

• Experience of using online project management and collaboration tools (e.g. Miro, Airtable) 

• Personal commitment to the principles of data justice, diversity & inclusion and community empowerment 

• Experience of working in a multidisciplinary design team and familiarity with agile methodologies. (Desirable)

Communicating and influencing

• Experience with delivering complex projects that involve significant relationship management with multiple partners and/or clients.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills, including an ability to communicate concepts, strategies and interdependencies effectively to a wide range of audiences 

• Some experience of working with policy makers and civil servants including policy engagement activities, writing policy briefs and policy design (Desirable)

What we offer

Salary: circa £40k, depending on experience, plus array of benefits, including health cash plans, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more  

Location: This role is based in Central London, Blackfriars, but we offer flexibility for our people to work remotely 

Term:   Permanent

Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them.

Reports to: Principal Researcher (Collective Intelligence)

Making an application 

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00am on the 14th of March 2022.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.