Research Associate

About the role

The Department of Psychology is seeking a skilled and highly motivated post-doctoral research associate to support a 2-year Leverhulme Trust funded project exploring the effect of personal relative deprivation on health and wellbeing.  

The project, led by Professor Mitchell Callan, aims to use a combination of longitudinal and experimental methods to test the causal pathways between personal relative deprivation – an individual’s satisfaction with their “lot in life” relative to their peers – and mental and physical wellbeing. This will involve a combination of online questionnaire-based (micro)longitudinal studies and lab-based research using physiological measures of stress (e.g., cardiovascular reactivity, acoustic speech features, pupillometry).

The post holder will be actively involved in:

• design, preparation and piloting of research materials
• recruitment and data collection (in-person and online), including overseeing research students collecting data in the labs
• analysis of the data (preferably using R) according to open science practices
• preparing high quality manuscripts for publication.

The post holder will join Bath’s thriving Social and Cultural Cognition research group. They will be supported in learning new methodological and analytical techniques, with candidates not expected to have experience in all the methods applied in this research. The post holder will be encouraged and supported in pursuing career development opportunities.

We welcome applications from candidates who have:

• A PhD in Psychology or related discipline, with a quantitative research element.
• Experience of data collection using computerised research tools (e.g., Prolific, Gorilla, Qualtrics) and interest or experience in using physiological research methods/tools (e.g., eye tracker, BIOPAC, acoustic speech).
• Experience with advanced quantitative data analysis and visualisation (preferably using R) and a commitment to research integrity and reproducibility (e.g., preregistration, open science)
• Excellent team working, communication, and time management skills.

We have one position available offered on a full time (36.5 hours per week) fixed-term basis. The post is funded until 28/02/26.

Informal enquiries about this role should be directed to Prof Mitchell Callan ([email protected] ) or Dr Emily Taylor ([email protected] ). Please ensure you submit your application through our website.

What we can offer you:

Find out more about our benefits .

We consider ourselves to be an inclusive university, where difference is celebrated, respected and encouraged. We have an excellent international reputation with staff from over 60 different nations and have made a positive commitment towards gender equality and intersectionality receiving a Silver Athena SWAN award . We truly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds will lead to a better environment for our employees and students, so we encourage applications from all genders, backgrounds, and communities, particularly from under-represented groups, and value the positive impact that will have on our teams. 

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Further details:

We are constantly seeking to reduce the unconscious bias that enters any assessment process, with the goal of creating an inclusive and equal assessment process. To support this, personal details will be removed from application forms at the initial shortlisting stage.