Research Assistant To Head Of Department

Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture Centre Administrator Job Description – 2023/24

King's College London has a rich history of pioneering Portuguese language education in British universities, dating back to the 1860s. The Camões Centre, created in 2010 through an agreement between Instituto Camões and King's College London, plays a vital role in promoting Portuguese culture and education. The Centre facilitates interdisciplinary symposia, fosters partnerships with Portuguese universities, and encourages exchanges of professors and students. With its interdisciplinary approach, the Camões Centre contributes to the growing interest in the Portuguese language and aligns with King's College London's broader internationalization strategy, serving as a hub for academic and cultural activities related to Portugal across various disciplines at the university level in the UK.

The Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture are looking for a Centre Administrator to provide administrative, communications, and impact and engagement support for the diverse programme of creative activity.

Through their programme, the centre explores new ways of developing and conducting interdisciplinary and socially engaged research and research-led teaching with a range of stakeholders, participants and audiences. The Centre Administrator will actively contribute to embedding related cultural competencies throughout the AHRI research centres.

Role purpose:

The main responsibilities are as follows:

• Development and management of a series of on- and off-line impact and engagement activities throughout the academic year


• Tasks involved with virtual activities may involve liaising with the KCL IT team, academics, artists and participants, acting as producer for online activity, managing bookings, enquiries and evaluation


• Tasks involved with physical activities may include organising and coordinating events, booking catering and AV, liaising with academics, artists and participants, managing bookings, enquiries and evaluation


• Oversight and management of the research centre’s budget, submitting monthly reports to the AHCentre Director


• Room bookings for centre activity throughout the academic year


• Management of the research centre inbox


• Raising the profile of the research centre and of associated engagement and impact activities through mailing lists, web pages, email newsletters and social media activities


• Ensuring clear lines of communication between the research centre and the AHRI, maximising cross-promotional opportunities and sharing good practice with other centres


• Active participation in a range of professional development and support opportunities organised by the College

Role conditions

Applicants must be a King’s College London PhD Student available to work for the centre for the remainder of the academic year.

The role-holder will be paid £13.48 per hour, for 4 hours per week. Hours can be worked flexibly in agreement with the Centre Director. The start date for the first assignment is 20th November 2023.

Assignment dates:

• Monday 20th November to Friday  5th July 2024

The Centre Administrator will be required to submit a report at the end of each assignment, detailing their engagement activities over the past semester and plans for the next semester.

To apply

Interested applicants should send their CV and cover letter to the Director Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture, Alexandra Lourenco Dias (alexandra.lourenco_dias@kcl.ac.uk) by 5pm, Monday 13th November 2023, with interviews taking place in person on Friday 17th November in the Camões Centre, VWB room 5.43

The cover letter should be no longer than 2 pages, detailing:

• Why you are interested in the role and how your research connects with that of the research centre


• The relevant skills and experience you have that would make you suitable for the role


• One innovative engagement activity that you would suggest for your research centre that would enable them to reach new, non-academic public

Informal enquiries should be made to Alexandra Lourenco Dias (alexandra.lourenco_dias@kcl.ac.uk)

King's is committed to creating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive workforce which represents all aspects of the communities we are part of and welcomes all applications.

Please note that applicants do not need to speak Portuguese and will work in English.

King’s encourages applications from individuals with a disability who are able to carry out the duties of the post. If you have any adjustments in relation to your application, please get in touch.

Applicants must be a King’s College London PhD Student available to work for the centre for the remainder of the academic year.

Essential Requirements:

• Excellent time management and organisation skills, able to manage own workload and prioritise tasks


• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, and ability to communicate effectively with a wide variety of stakeholders


• Practical, pragmatic approach, able to act on own initiative


• Excellent IT and digital skills


• Able to think creatively with originality and insight


• Experience of event planning and management


• Experience of balancing competing priorities under pressure of deadlines and workload


• Experience in administration and inbox management

Desirable Requirements:

• Academic qualification in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience in a relevant discipline


• Knowledge of interdisciplinary, socially engaged research and education activities, especially those in relation to Arts, Culture and Humanities


• Experience of using email


• Experience of using social media


• Experience of budget management


• Able to work occasional evenings and weekends as required for the delivery of events

 The KCL component of the XCEPT project is looking for a Project Assistant to join our team within the next month, the sooner the better. The role is full time and until March 31st, 2024. XCEPT is a large multi-country research project, funded by the UK's FCDO and UKAID, that explores pathways to peace and/or violence in fragile and conflict affected states. We have multi-method studies underway in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and soon in South Sudan. 

The Project Assistant will assist with the research (3 days per week) and support with project operations (2 days per week). Therefore, we think this is an exciting opportunity to gain broad experience in how large, complex research projects are implemented. Operations duties will include (but are not limited to) supporting the Project Manager with financial administration, aspects of procurement, contracting, duty of care planning and monitoring the outputs schedule. Research assistance tasks will involve literature reviews, data management and processing of survey data, quantitative data analysis, and contributing to outputs such as working papers and journal articles.  

We’d like to hear from people who are enthusiastic about the subject area and would like to continue their career in this field. As this is an early career role, it’s not expected candidates will have prior professional experience. However, research skills developed in reviewing literature, quantitative data analysis, and writing research outputs during your studies are important for the position. The Project Assistant will be listed as co-author on any papers they contribute to either through data analysis or writing. There will also be an opportunity to work on communications outputs such as blogs, podcasts, and video pieces, if this is of interest. 

- bachelors degree in a relevant subject area

- quantitative research skills developed during studying 

- administrative skills

We are looking for two (2) MA or PhD students with experience in thematic and linguistic analysis to work on qualitative data analysis for a research project funded by the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub. 

The analysis will regard written texts in interview transcriptions. We have curated 46 interview transcripts (average 13 pages in length). We expect the thematic analysis to be completed in 4 weeks. The weekly workload is flexible but must not exceed 8 hours per week.

The selected candidates will be working with the research team of the Leap of Faith TAS Hub project, where we investigate factors affecting instantaneous trust in human robot interactions. Instantaneous trust manifests in situations where a human comes into contact with a robot with no prior interaction history. The robot issues an instruction expecting compliance from the human.  We assume that if the human complies with the instruction, the compliance is based on instantaneous trust to the robot. In this project, we explore the impact of the robot's relatability in instantaneous trust. Our definition of relatability encapsulates 3 properties:

1. Movement of the robot during the interaction (2 levels - movement relevant in the context, no movement)


2. Voice of the robot (3 levels - Friendly human voice, Indifferent human voice, robotic voice)


3. Embodiment of the robot (2 levels - TiaGo, Turtlebot)

Through the thematic analysis we expect to resolve the following questions

1. What aspects of relatability (movment, voice, embodiment) are most influential in contributing toward creating a trusted interaction instantaneously between a robot and a human? 


2. Do the most influential relatable aspects change based on
   
   
   
   1. Perceived risk of the scenario 
   
   
   2. Human characteristics (past experiences)
   
   
   
   

Start date 20th April or as soon as possible

MA or PhD students with experience in thematic and linguistic analysis to work on qualitative data analysis

Essential

• Has a background in Social sciences


• Experience in applying thematic analysis on data generated from interview transcripts


• Generate inductive and deductive codes for the interview transcripts


• Work collegially with another person to check the intercoder reliability of the data


• Writeup the results of the analysis with some degree of independence