Our vision is that by 2030, Nesta will have improved the lives of millions of people by designing, testing and scaling new solutions to society’s biggest challenges.
The role
Nesta is looking for a Senior Researcher/Researcher to work on a range of policy-oriented research projects, including an exciting project working with policy and practice groups in the US to create a number of stakeholder-led evidence outputs around entrepreneurship and business support research.
Key roles and responsibilities
You will play an active role in the full research project’s lifecycle and focus on supporting the delivery of research projects through conducting primary and secondary research and analysis, as well as identifying policy challenges and gaps in the evidence base in the domain of innovation, entrepreneurship and growth policy. You will also be expected to:
- Work closely with stakeholders to understand the challenges and priorities of the policy and practice communities
- Translate and communicate the findings of relevant rigorous research for policy and practice audiences
- Create outputs that bring together these findings in an accessible and engaging manner for policy and practice audiences, such as policy briefs, presentations, reports, and blogs
- Undertake analysis of data from a range of sources to discover and share new policy relevant findings
- Collaborate with the wider team to develop evidence workshops, create research outputs and explore opportunities for randomised controlled trials.
Experience and skills
You will have a genuine passion for innovation and entrepreneurship and have up-to-date knowledge of the relevant academic literature on innovation and/or entrepreneurship policy. A good communicator, you will have some experience of producing reports for non-technical audiences, technical reports, writing for a policy audience, blogging, interviewing, and/or running workshops.
Strong interpersonal and prioritisation skills are essential as is the ability to work independently, learn quickly, and manage competing and changing priorities, while an understanding of the US innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems would be beneficial.
Additional information
Salary: £38k-£50k (senior researcher) £31-£41k pa (researcher) + excellent benefits