About us

Do you want to make a positive impact on the experiences of doctoral researchers at King’s College London? Could your ideas foster new community networks or enhance doctoral training and development opportunities?

We are recruiting three Doctoral College Development Associates to join the King’s Doctoral College team on one-year fixed term contracts, working 21 hours per week (0.6FTE).

King's Doctoral College is dedicated to continually improving the experience of researchers undertaking PhDs or other doctoral degrees. Our work is grounded in collaborative partnerships with doctoral researchers and academic staff in all disciplines across our nine faculties. These new posts will contribute to our ongoing mission of making continual improvements to our provision, ensuring it is as inclusive, accessible and engaging as possible for our diverse community of research students.

Our friendly, professional community at King’s embraces a culture with a deep respect for individual differences, and we encourage applications from people with a diverse range of experiences. Our employee benefits include flexible working, development opportunities, wellbeing and community support. 

About the role

We will recruit three Doctoral College Development Associates, and each Associate will work alongside a current DED team member to either enhance existing activities or develop new initiatives. You will work on a diverse range of tasks to support doctoral researcher* development and community-building, including: contributing to the design, production, delivery, and evaluation of new activities and initiatives; gathering, analysing and presenting data and trends; connecting with doctoral researchers and the staff supporting them; and developing knowledge of good practice with regard to doctoral researcher support and development. Specific objectives and responsibilities will be defined between each Associate and their line manager, but each post will align with one of the three pathways below:

Engagement and Communications Pathway

In this pathway, the Associate will work on engagement and communication activities available to all doctoral researchers at King’s. These might include:

• Helping to foster a doctoral researcher community, reviewing the Community fund, developing student-led activities across King’s, and developing an event for doctoral researchers who are further through their degree.
• Improving the impact of doctoral researcher voice alongside student reps and the KCLSU, and through helping establish regular focus groups.
• Writing communications for website, blog, social media and internal newsletters.

Doctoral Student Development Pathway 

In this pathway, the Associate will predominately work on the training and development provision available to all doctoral researchers at King’s. This might include:

• Supporting the organisation, promotion and delivery of the existing development programme and related activities (e.g. workshops, the Three Minute Thesis competition and the RLF Writing Fellows).
• Developing new events and initiatives to expand the development opportunities available to King’s doctoral researchers (e.g. designing new workshops and resources to encourage purposeful development).
• Monitoring and assessing the existing development programme to ensure continuous improvement.

Digital Learning and Community Pathway

In this pathway, the Associate will work on projects to expand asynchronous development and community-building opportunities for all doctoral researchers at King’s. These might include:

• Developing a collection of digital resources and toolkits to promote equity, diversity and inclusion at the King’s Doctoral College.
• Contributing to the development of on-demand courses on essential doctoral phases (e.g., supervisory relationship, thesis writing up, post-viva support).
• Supporting building online communities for doctoral researchers to connect with peers at King’s and/or other institutions, either by developing new digital platforms or improving existing networks.

In your application, please rank the three pathways in the order of your preference.

The post is designed to be developmental. You will be supported to engage with continuing professional development opportunities available to King’s staff and encouraged to make use of the other career development benefits of continuing to be employed within a Higher Education Institution (e.g. library and resource access, networking and mentoring opportunities with academic and professional services staff). The role will be most suitable for someone who is finishing/has recently finished their doctorate, as you will gain beneficial experience that will be transferable into both academic and non-academic future roles.

This is a hybrid role with the expectation of 1 day per week working from our central London offices.

This is a part time post (21 hours per week), and you will be offered a 1-year fixed term contract. If the FTE does not suit your circumstances, you are also welcome to apply, and we would be happy to discuss the FTE arrangement with you at the interview.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria 

1. Knowledge and/or interest in doctoral researcher development and support.
2. An understanding of the doctoral researcher experience and the challenges involved in doctoral education.   
3. Excellent oral and written communications skills, and able to engage with students and staff at all levels in a professional manner.   
4. Confident in working independently and setting own objectives as well as collaborating on key activities with a dynamic and supportive team. 
5. Ability to manage concurrent projects and tasks effectively and to deadline.
6. Strong proficiency in Microsoft 365 including Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook, and the keenness to work on new systems.
7. Experience of gathering, manipulating, interpreting and summarising data and complex information effectively.
8. Excellent interpersonal skills, ability to respond empathetically and provide support to colleagues and students  

Desirable criteria 

1. Educated or being educated to doctoral degree level.
2. Knowledge and experience of working in the higher education sector.
3. Experience with event management (i.e. the planning, delivery and evaluation of in-person and digital events)
4. Experience with student representation and advocacy
5. An understanding of EDI, wellbeing, engagement and workplace culture activities. 

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

If you would like to have an informal chat about the role before applying, please contact Dr Shijia Yu, Doctoral Student Development Officer (shijia.yu@kcl.ac.uk).

Further information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community. 

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible. In your supporting statement, please try to be specific and refer to concrete examples to demonstrate how you meet the criteria (e.g., using  the STAR method). You can use relevant examples from education, work, volunteer, or life experience.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘ How we Recruit’ pages.

Online interviews are due to be held on 23, 24, 25 October. The interview will consist of a short written assessment and a panel interview.

We are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who do not currently possess the right to work in the UK.