Constitution Unit seeks researcher for project on public deliberation

The UCL Constitution Unit is leading a new project to hold a Citizens' Assembly on Brexit.  The Assembly will engage ordinary citizens in detailed deliberation on the form that Brexit should take.  It will follow the broad model of past citizens' assemblies, such as those in Ontario and Ireland. 

The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).  It is led by the Constitution Unit's Deputy Director, Dr Alan Renwick, working alongside the Unit's Director, Professor Meg Russell, Professor Graham Smith (University of Westminster), Professor Will Jennings (University of Southampton) and the Electoral Reform Society.  This team previously participated in the Democracy Matters project, which ran two pilot citizens' assemblies on local devolution, in Sheffield and Southampton in 2015.

To help deliver the project, we are seeking a Research Assistant (pre-doc) or Research Associate (post-doc), who will work closely with the project's Principal Investigator, Dr Alan Renwick. The researcher will be closely involved in the process of planning and delivering the Citizens' Assembly.  She or he will also take a leading role in developing, researching, and writing the project's core academic outputs, which we expect will include at least two articles for scholarly journals.

We are seeking to appoint a person with excellent research skills who has knowledge of - but can take an open-minded approach towards - debates about Brexit, and who preferably has some expertise relating to deliberative democracy.

The post is available from 1 June 2017 (or as soon as possible thereafter) for seven months.  The Citizens' Assembly is due to meet in September.  Full details of the post are available in the job advertisement and associated job description, which are available here.  Further details of the project are available here.