"Research Fellow"

About us

The successful candidate will join a well-established research group in UCL’s Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, with other postdoctoral researchers, research assistants, and trial managers working on similar projects, all exploring mental health and wellbeing in care-experienced young people. This research is all aimed at improving local and national policy and practice, and the team regularly liaise with Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care. The team also have an established care-experienced advisory group.

About the role

The successful candidate will join PI Rachel Hiller’s team (Child Trauma & Recovery research group) to work on a large NIHR-funded research project called the MyVoice Project. MyVoice uses a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design to test a comprehensive mental health assessment package for children and teens in the care system. We are interested in whether this improves outcomes for children in care, by changing and improving decision-making within and between services. The project started June 2025 and is in the early stages of recruitment.

This role is eligible for hybrid working with a minimum of 60% on site, which must include Wednesdays (subject to change).

About you

The postdoctoral researcher will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the children’s social care based RCT, which will compare a comprehensive mental health assessment to usual-care, with an embedded process evaluation. They will be supported on this project by the PI, a multidisciplinary co-investigator team, and a research assistant and trial manager. They will work closely with a second part-time postdoctoral researcher, who will be based at Newcastle University.

Roles will include: working closely with children’s services/local authorities across England, as well as mental health teams; liaising with senior and frontline professionals to support recruitment and data collection; recruitment and consenting of young people and caregivers; conducting thorough assessments with young people and caregivers, including using standardized mental health measures and conducting qualitative interviews and focus groups; collating data and maintaining comprehensive excel spreadsheets to track progress; comprehensive data management as required by a large-scale RCT; liaisng with the trial steering committee; contributing to and leading on reports to the funder; the opportunity to lead on outputs, including academic papers, conference presentations, and non-academic outputs; day-to-day support to the research assistant, and working closely with a trial manager.

All children in this study will be struggling with their mental health, so the postholder will require the necessary competence and resilience to work with children who may be vulnerable and may disclose issues that require risk escalation or safeguarding. Any new postholder would receive comprehensive training in these processes, and the research group have established reflective spaces and strong supervision structures to support this work.

What we offer

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer great benefits. Please visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/rewards-and-benefits to find out more.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/