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Research Fellow in Computational Public Policy

Hybrid in London·Added today (last checked 13 Nov)

University College London

134 open roles

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Our summary

Salary: £44,861 - £55,099 a year
About £2,980 - £3,540 a month after tax.
Work mode: Hybrid, London
Holiday: 41 days holiday
Commute: Cycle to work and season ticket loan

Skills

Pay & benefits

What you'll get

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below: • 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days) • Additional 5 days' annual leave purchase scheme • Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE) • Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan • Immigration loan • Relocation scheme for certain posts • On-Site nursery • On-site gym • Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay • Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service • Discounted medical insurance Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/rewards-and-benefits to find out more.

The role

What you'll do

Duties and responsibilities

Contribute to conceptual development by furthering our understanding of how city government officials in varying contexts use language.

Scope, source, and clean corpora including legislation and regulation, council and committee minutes, policy/strategy documents, consultations, programme evaluations and performance reports, government websites, contracts and requests for proposals, job ads, organograms, freedom of information responses, and competency frameworks.

Support the refinement and standardisation of data collection protocols and scoring frameworks to ensure consistent methodology across different city contexts.

Design end-to-end machine learning/NLP pipelines (including data collection, pre-processing, annotation, model training, validation, and documentation).

Build agent-based, microsimulation, or AI agent-based models to explore policy scenarios and organisational adaptation.

Collaborate with product and engineering colleagues and teams to design and build a data-driven digital platform.

Ensure data quality, governance, and compliance with security and privacy standards. Communicate insights through visualisations, reports, and presentations to stakeholders.

Monitor and perform quality checks on collected data, transcription, and coding outputs, flagging and resolving inconsistencies or errors. Contribute to the iterative improvement of the survey instrument and codebook, incorporating feedback and piloting adjustments to improve clarity and validity.

Translate technical and analytical results into accessible reports, visualisations, and presentations for diverse audiences (city governments, funders, researchers).

Help track project progress against milestones, prepare internal and external progress reports, and flag risks or issues.

Collaborate actively with Index colleagues to connect data outputs to theoretical insights, policy implications, and future directions. Undertake other tasks as reasonably required to support successful delivery of the Public Sector Capabilities Index project.

Translate Index results and frameworks into clear narratives, appropriate working and key messages - the story the data tells, not just the data.

Work on how data stories and city profiles are framed on the platform, including the wording used to describe results, so findings are understood as intended and are hard to misread.

Develop narratives for events, presentations, launch moments and social media.

General

Follow and actively promote the UCL Ways of Working.

Carry out any other duties within the scope, spirit and purpose of the job as requested by the line manager. This job description may be reviewed and be subject to amendment in consultation with the post holder. UCL offers hybrid working where appropriate and the successful applicant may normally work remotely for up to 60% of the week if they wish To maintain an awareness and observation of fire and health and safety regulations. Any other duties appropriate to the grade of the role as required by the line manager.

About you

The role holder will actively promote UCL equalities and diversity policies and be expected to give consideration within their role as to how they can actively advance equality of opportunity and good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and people who do not share it. Continuous change is typical of the Faculty environment and something that the administrative team thrive on and adapt to.

The role holder has a responsibility to carry out their duties in a way that embodies UCL's environmental and social sustainability values, actively supporting UCL's Sustainability Strategy, policies and objectives within the remit of their role. This includes supporting UCL's overarching aim to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2030.

The role holder will be a role model for the UCL Ways of Working, Dignity at Work and take an active role in Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity activities. The role holder will actively promote UCL equalities and diversity policies and be expected to give consideration within their role as to how they can actively advance equality of opportunity and good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and people who do not share it. Continuous change is typical of the Faculty environment and something that the administrative team thrive on and adapt to.

About University College London

Industry: Higher Education

In their own words

About the company & team

We are The Bartlett, UCL's global Faculty of the Built Environment. Individually, our departments lead their fields. In partnership, they develop new responses to pressing world issues. As a whole, they represent a world-leading, multidisciplinary faculty, united by the radical spirit of UCL. Our vision is of a world where everything that's built aims to add to the well-being of people and the environment.

The Bartlett is unrivalled in its breadth and depth of disciplines, programmes and departments. It is made up 13 Schools, Institutes, Centres and Units, providing teaching and research in a wide range of subject areas to over 4,000 students each year from across the world.

About IIPP The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London (UCL) brings together cutting-edge academic theory with teaching and policy practice, to rethink the role of the state in tackling some of the biggest challenges facing society.

IIPP works with partners to develop a framework which challenges traditional economic thinking, with the goal of creating, nurturing and evaluating public value in order to achieve growth that is more innovation-led, inclusive and sustainable. This requires rethinking the underlying economics that have informed the education of global public servants and the design of government policies.

IIPP's work feeds into innovation and industrial policy, financial reform, institutional change and sustainable development. A key pillar of IIPP's research is its understanding of markets as outcomes of the interactions between different actors. In this context, public policy should not be seen as simply fixing market failures, but also as actively shaping and co-creating markets. Re-focusing and designing public organisations around mission-led, public purpose aims will help tackle the grand challenges facing the 21st century.

IIPP is uniquely structured to ensure that this ground-breaking academic research is harnessed to tackle real world policy challenges. IIPP does this through its high-quality teaching programme, along with its growing global network of partners, and the ambitious policy practice programme. IIPP is a department within UCL - and part of The Bartlett, ranking number one in the world for architecture and the built environment in the world.

About the project The University College London (UCL) Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) is working with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies to develop the Public Sector Capabilities Index, the first global tool designed to assess dynamic capabilities in city governments. Since 2023, the project has engaged over 200 city officials across 40 cities in more than 20 countries to build the foundations of the Index. The next phase is a three-year collaboration to scale and embed adoption of the Index. Our aim is to reach at least 3,500 cities worldwide, creating a robust and globally comparable dataset that establishes the Index as a standard for cities and their funders and governments, to catalyse city government improvements. This will allow decision-makers at city, national, regional and multilateral levels to better assess where and how to invest in public sector capabilities. Further details about the Public Sector Capabilities Index are in our recent report available here. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2025/oct/assessing-dynamic-capabilities-city-governments-creating-public-sector-capabilities-index

About Office of Professor Mazzucato

Professor Mariana Mazzucato (PhD, CBE) is a globally recognised economist and policy advisor, known for shaping ambitious approaches to public value, innovation, and inclusive economic growth.

She is Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at UCL and Founding Director of IIPP. She advises governments and multilateral organisations on mission-oriented policies driving sustainable and inclusive economic transformation. She serves as Chair of the World Health Organization Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and Special Representative of President Ramaphosa to the 2025 G20 Taskforce on Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialisation, Employment, and Reduced Inequality. She also advises leaders around the world on mission-oriented industrial strategy, is a member of the South African President's Economic Advisory Council and advises COP30 President Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago.

Her work has shaped global debates on the state's role in market formation and public value. Her award-winning books include The Entrepreneurial State (2013), The Value of Everything (2018), Mission Economy (2021), and The Big Con (2023), which challenge conventional economic thinking and propose bold frameworks for reimagining capitalism.

About Dr. Rainer Kattel Rainer Kattel is Deputy Director and Professor of Innovation and Public Governance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). He has studied at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and the University of Marburg, Germany, in philosophy, political philosophy, classics and public administration. He led Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance for 10 years, building it into one of the leading innovation and governance schools in the region.

Professor Kattel has also served on various public policy commissions, including the Estonian Research Council and European Science Foundation. He has worked as an expert for the OECD, UNDP and the European Commission, and served as a member of E-Estonia Council advising the Prime Minister of Estonia. Currently, he leads the Estonian Government's Gender Equality Council. He has published extensively on innovation policy, its governance and specific management issues. In 2013, he received Estonia's National Science Award for his work on innovation policy.

Additional information

As London's Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We particularly encourage applications from candidates underrepresented in UCL's workforce, including those from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds, disabled people, and - for Grade 9 and 10 roles - women.

Applicants should also familiarise themselves with UCL's policies on: Prevention of Bullying, Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Policy and Personal Relationships Policy.

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