Contract: 12-month fixed term contract with possibility of extension, full-time (or close to full-time)

Location: Farringdon, London. Hybrid, three days a week in the office

Salary: £35,000 – 45,000

Reports to: Deputy Director

About Campaign Lab

Campaign Lab is a network of technologists and campaigners focused on campaign innovation. Founded in 2018, we work through a small paid team, a committed group of volunteers, and a wider network of campaigners, technologists and organisations.

We are an experimental, research-driven organisation. We research, invent, test and embed effective tools and practices to strengthen progressive campaigning. Our work includes applied research, pilot projects, hackdays, and partnerships with elected officials, campaigners and third sector organisations.

About the role

We are looking for a Research Associate to help the progressive movement learn what works in campaigning. It is an early-career role, ideal for someone who has recently finished a PhD in political science or a related field.

This is applied research outside academia. Your work will shape what campaigners and organisers actually do. You might design a survey experiment one month and explain its findings to a campaigner the next. 

You will bring methodological training. We will give you real projects, partners in the field, and support to grow into a rounded applied researcher.

What you’ll do

Research design and delivery

• Design, run and analyse research projects using a variety of methods such as rapid literature scans, randomised controlled trials, A/B tests, surveys, qualitative interviews, process evaluations, quantitative analysis and piloting. We don’t expect you to be expert in all of these on day one.
• Choose the right approach for each question, balancing rigour with speed and practicality
• Clean, analyse and interpret data, and keep research quality and integrity high

Translation and communication

• Turn findings into clear, practical outputs for people without a research background, including campaigners, organisers and politicians
• Write up research for blogs, briefings and events

Partnerships and collaboration

• Work with partner organisations, many without their own research capacity, to design and run studies
• Work alongside our technologists to build research into tools and pilot projects

What we offer you

• Research that reaches the field quickly and changes practice
• Opportunities to co-author with academic partners and present at conferences
• A training and development budget of £500 a year
• Opportunities to develop tech skills quickly with partners from Newspeak House
• A small, friendly team working at the meeting point of politics, research and technology

Who we’re looking for

Your PhD counts as research experience. We don’t expect a track record beyond it.

Essential

• A PhD in political science or a related field (such as economics or psychology), or a quantitative field such as statistics, mathematics, physics, data science or computer science with a clear interest in politics, completed or submitted
• Strong applied statistics skills, including sampling and weighting, significance testing, and building robust measures from large, messy, unrepresentative datasets
• Working knowledge of R or Python
• Experience designing or running field experiments or evaluations 
• Training in quantitative and/or experimental methods, or survey design
• A practical interest in research that gets used, not just published
• Clear writing, and the ability to explain research to non-specialists
• Good organisation, with the ability to juggle several projects
• A willingness to change tracks quickly and adapt your projects and plans as the context changes
• Commitment to Campaign Lab’s mission and to progressive politics

Desirable

• Broader data engineering skills (SQL, databases)
• Experience analysing text, including computational text methods or using AI/LLM tools for classification 
• Familiarity with the UK progressive ecosystem: parties, trade unions, civil society and campaign groups
• Experience of qualitative methods
• Experience working with partners outside academia

We particularly welcome applications from people under-represented in politics, technology and research.

How to apply

Send your CV and a covering note of no more than 500 words to [email protected]. In your note, please also answer this question:

Tell us about a question from campaigning or organising that you would want to test, and how you would go about it.

Deadline: Applications will be accepted and assessed on a rolling basis, so please do apply soon if you’re interested and think you’d be a good fit!

Interviews: Interviews will be conducted on a rolling basis. 

Visa sponsorship: We cannot sponsor visas for this role.