Place Research Coordinator

Know Your Place is a five year, externally funded project that will build a community research network for young people across Staffordshire. Led by Staffordshire Council for Voluntary Youth Services, in partnership with Staffordshire University, the project is co-created with young people and will ensure young people's voices shape research and social policy across the region., The Know Your Place Research Coordinator will deliver and coordinate the research element of the Know Your Place programme, ensuring research is made accessible to young people and their opinions and voices inform research, social action and social policy. They will:
o Ensure all ethical research practices are adhered to across the research project and keep all ethical approvals up to date.
o Support a Young People's steering group and other young people to fully engage with participatory action research about their local area, including data collection, data interpretation, and clear dissemination of findings for a range of research and policy audiences.
o Deliver training and support for participatory action research to young people and community partners.
o Coordinate a Student Innovation Project, enabling the University of Staffordshire Students to identify innovative solutions to place based challenges as identified by young people.
o Support young people to ensure they are reaching a diverse range of peers to engage in the participatory action research project.
o Facilitate young people's engagement with researchers and research centres at the University of Staffordshire.
o Collect, analyse and disseminate research and evaluation data of the project outcomes.
o Support the planning and delivery of an annual conference.
o Work with the Centre Director to maximise the impact and legacy of the research and disseminate associated research outputs.

The University of Staffordshire are seeking to appoint a Research Coordinator to lead on participatory action research that underpins the project. With a strong understanding of participatory action principles and values the research coordinator will support young people to engage with the research process, including data gathering, analysis and dissemination. The successful candidate will have experience of non-traditional and creative research methods to include a broad range of voices in research and have experience of delivering PAR for social change. They will have experience of working collaboratively with young people and communities and have a good understanding of research ethics and will be able to work effectively with voluntary sector partners.