Parliamentary Academic Fellowship: Mapping Public Engagement in Parliaments across the world

We have an exciting opportunity for a university-based researcher or university-based knowledge exchange professional to participate in a Parliamentary Academic Fellowship, mapping public engagement in parliaments across the world. 

About the role

The Knowledge Exchange Unit in the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology runs the Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme. This Scheme gives university-based researchers and university-based knowledge exchange professionals the opportunity to participate in a fellowship project with an office in Parliament.  

This fellowship will be hosted by the House of Commons Library, but work with teams across UK Parliament, including those that work in education, engagement, outreach, petitions and knowledge exchange.   

The primary aim of this fellowship is to gather knowledge about public engagement activities taking place in parliaments around the world. This knowledge will be used to support the secondary aim of the project: to enable lesson sharing and knowledge exchange between the services delivering these activities, including in the UK Parliament, primarily through the International Parliament Engagement Network (IPEN).  

This fellowship will enable different parts of UK Parliament to learn from activities in other parliaments. It will also help IPEN expand its scope, reaching new parliaments and offering IPEN members more opportunities for collaboration and learning. 

What will you be doing?

This is an exciting opportunity for a university-based researcher or university-based knowledge exchange professional to work closely with Parliament, have new experiences and develop their skills and parliamentary and international networks. Through their information gathering, the fellow will build or strengthen links between UK Parliament and identified stakeholders and help facilitate knowledge exchange, collaboration, and innovation in how parliaments engage with their publics. 

Activities will include

• Determining the scope of the project, research questions and methodology
• Identifying challenges, risks and planning to mitigate for these
• Conducting data collection, developing networks, analysing, synthesising, and presenting findings

Candidate requirements

The successful candidate should be able to demonstrate the following on their online application form:

• Ability to identify relevant international stakeholders, using a variety of research and networking techniques, and to initiate positive working relationships with them.
• Ability to build good relationships and have an inclusive approach while working with a diverse range of people from different backgrounds and countries.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with experience in communicating complex information to diverse, non-specialist audiences, in different contexts, and to achieve different goals.
• Research and analytical skills, with experience or knowledge of techniques for conducting interviews.
• Experience of planning, managing and delivering a project with engagement with multiple stakeholders, organisations or people.
• Experience of thinking creatively to overcome challenges.

Next steps

If you are interested in this role, please submit your application form and completed writing sample through this portal. This is not an employment recruitment process; an online recruitment portal is being used for best practice, including protection of your data and diversity monitoring.

For more information on this role, or to contact the Knowledge Exchange Unit who are coordinating this call, please refer to the documents found above (Fellowship Description Document and Guidance Notes for Applicants).