"Research Assistant (Job Number: 25001061)"

Research Assistant (Job Number: 25001061)

Department of Geography

Grade 6: - £30,805 - £36,130 per annum

Fixed Term - Full Time

Contract Duration: 24 months

Contracted Hours per Week: 35

Working Arrangements: TBC

Closing Date: 29-Aug-2025, 6:59:00 AM

Disclosure and Barring Service Requirement: Not Applicable.

The University

At Durham University we are proud of our people. A globally outstanding centre of educational excellence, a collegiate community of extraordinary people, a unique and historic setting – Durham is a university like no other. We believe that inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham enables Durham people to do outstanding things professionally and personally. 

Across the University we have a huge variety of roles and career opportunities, which together make us a large and successful community, which is a key hub of activity within our region and nationally. We would be thrilled if you would consider joining our thriving University. Further information about the University can be found here.

The Department

The Department of Geography at Durham comprises 65 academic staff (approximately equally divided between Human and Physical geography), a graduate school of around 100 research students, around 40 taught postgraduate students and 850 undergraduates. The Department is well supported with technical staff, including a cartography unit, and administrative staff.

The Department was ranked joint first for research quality among UK geography departments in REF2021.  54% of our outputs were classed as ‘world leading’ and more than 92% as ‘world leading’ or internationally excellent’.  The most recent QS rankings for Geography placed Durham 16^th overall in the world.  The department is recurrently ranked in the top handful of programmes in the UK by various league tables; for example, we were ranked 1^st in the 2025 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, and 4th in the 2025 Complete University Guide.

Our aim is to sustain and support hubs of leadership in geographical scholarship – broadly conceived. We will maintain our reputation for theoretical and conceptual innovation so that we are shaping and leading debates globally.

We will continue to engage concepts and materials from across disciplinary boundaries to renew geographical scholarship and bring geographical perspectives to bear in other domains. We work across every continent and most major oceans and embrace the full diversity of methods and data available to the discipline.

We are further developing our core undergraduate programmes and will be recruiting world leading staff accordingly to ensure these programmes continue to offer the highest quality of education that develop students with skills to advance scholarly and public debates to which geography is central. The quality of our undergraduate students, and the degree programmes which ensue, combine with our large graduate school to provide a teaching experience for staff that is truly excellent.

The Role

A 24-month fixed term full time Research Assistant (RA) position is available in the Department of Geography at Durham University. The successful candidate will join the project ‘V2C: Viking To Christian Landscapes Across The Norweigain Sea: Agricultural Trajectories And Resilience Usng SedaDNA and Fecal Lipids’. The project is led at Durham by Dr Helen Mackay and is funded by the Research Council of Norway.

As a RA on this project, the successful applicant will be required to develop reconstructions of human and animal activity from lakes and wetlands close to Viking-Medieval archaeological sites in northern Norway and Scotland using faecal steroid lipid biomarkers. Faecal steroid reconstrutions for the last 1500 years will be compared to other proxies of environmental change (such as sedaDNA, pollen and pXRF) and archaeological evidence developed by collaborators at the The Arctic University of Norway, University of Bergen and Universities of the Highlands and Islands. The wider project will provide a new comprenshive understanding of the balance of cultural and environmental factors in landscape history from the Viking to Christian periods in northern Norway and the Northern Isles, UK. The main responsibilities of the RA will be to develop faecal steroid datasets from lake sediments by processing sediment samples for gas chromatography analysis in a containment level 2 (CL2) laboratory, following established laboratory protocols, assisting with quality control, troubleshooting, and running of GC-FID and GC-MS. A further responsibility will be to prepare data, figures and text for publication and to communicate the interim and final findings of the research at collaborator workshops and other scientific meetings.

This is a great opportunity to work as part of a friendly team on a cutting-edge project. The RA will have access to outstanding resources including laboratory facilities.

The successful candidate will have demonstrated experience in creating geochemical data and in compiling and presenting geochemical data sets. Previous experience of working with sedimentary archives to reconstruct environmental change and/or organic geochemical analysis would be an advantage.

Responsibilities:

• To lead the production of faecal steroid biomarker reconstructions from lake sedimentary archives, using organic geochemical and gas chromatography laboratory analyses.
• To understand and convey information which needs careful explanation to the team or group of people through presentations, discussions and meetings which contribute to the production of research reports and publications.
• To write up results of research work, present information on research progress and outcomes to bodies supervising research in a clear and accurate manner.
• To analyse or undertake basic research by deciding how best to apply existing methodology according to overall context and objectives.
• To deal with problems that may affect the achievement of research objectives and deadlines by discussing with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and offering creative or innovative solutions.
• To liaise with research colleagues and make internal and external contacts to develop knowledge and understanding to form relationships for future research collaboration.
• To contribute to the planning of research projects.
• To assist in contributing to support student projects on the use of research methods and equipment. 
• To contribute to fostering a collegial and respectful working environment which is inclusive and welcoming and where everyone is treated fairly with dignity and respect.
• To engage in wider citizenship to support the department and wider discipline.
• To engage in continuing professional development by attending relevant training and development courses.   
• Any other reasonable duties

This post is fixed term for 24 months. The funding is available from 01.11.2025 and the project is time-limited and will end on 31.12.2027. Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post by 1^st November 2025, but must start no later than 5^th January 2026

The post-holder is employed to work on research/a research project which will be led by another colleague. Whilst this means that the post-holder will not be carrying out independent research in his/her own right, the expectation is that they will contribute to the advancement of the project, through the development of their own research ideas/adaptation and development of research protocols.

Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post by 1st November 2025