"Senior/Research Fellow in Energy Transitions and Justice"

Senior/Research Fellow in Energy Transitions and Justice

Cranfield University - Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences - Automotive, Energy and Photonics

Location:	Bedfordshire, Cranfield
Salary:	£37,337 to £48,039 per annum
Hours:	Full Time
Contract Type:	Fixed-Term/Contract

Placed On:	16th January 2026
Closes:	11th February 2026
Job Ref:	5213

Fixed Term Contract for 30 months

Research Fellow - Full time starting salary is normally in the range of £37,337 to £44,906 per annum.

Senior Research Fellow - Full time starting salary is normally in the range of £48,039 per annum.

Location: Cranfield, Bedfordshire

About the Role

We welcome applications from passionate, skilled, and committed social scientists to maximising the potential of hydrogen transition to undo past injustices and enable transition to net zero.

You will be advancing the development and application of socio-technical systems thinking and justice principles to ensure the benefits and disbenefits of hydrogen transition are borne fairly. You will be joining the Global Hydrogen Production Technologies (HyPT) Center which aims to develop net-zero and responsible hydrogen pathways across the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. You will become a member of the cross-cutting policies, economics and market thrust as well as the UK team. You will lead social aspects of hydrogen infrastructure development and justice work streams across the four jurisdictions. You will be expected to evaluate the incumbent governance regimes, including formal laws and regulations, against principles of flexibility and learning with a view to establish a set of adaptive governance principles and identify best practices. Analysing how hydrogen transition may impact vulnerable or indigenous peoples, in particular whether and how it can undo past injustices, is very important for this role. You are expected to work and coordinate this strand of work with our local partners across the four jurisdictions. You will also support Cranfield’s role to devise activities for embedding multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity between technical and social science teams.

About You

You will be educated to doctoral level in governance of energy systems or institutional perspectives to energy transitions or socio-technical perspectives to energy systems change or energy justice or energy policy and regulation.

With excellent communication skills, you will have expertise in social science research methods and development of new concepts and frameworks. For appointments at Senior Research Fellow level, demonstrated ability to win and deliver research grants or manage research teams is an essential criteria.

About Us

As a specialist postgraduate university, Cranfield’s world-class expertise, large-scale facilities and unrivalled industry partnerships are creating leaders in technology and management globally. Learn more about Cranfield and our unique impact here.

Cranfield’s expertise in Automotive, Energy and Photonics covers a wide range of research, teaching, short course, and consulting expertise across these three main areas. Our automotive team drive sector leading work on motorsport engineering, mechatronics, autonomous vehicles and battery technologies. Our energy team, developed from our ongoing relationship with oil and gas, works on developing reliance on renewable energy from the world around. Addressing this changing energy landscape includes work on new technologies and services related to low carbon energy and transition to net zero. Our engineering photonics team is one of the UK’s leading optical sensing and instrumentation research centres, encompassing; fibre optic sensors, optical flow measurement instrumentation, speckle interferometry, spectroscopic gas detection and medical imaging.

Closing date for receipt of applications: 11th February 2026