Research Associate - Study Coordinator for the MRC Genes & Mental Health

About us:

This exciting role is based with the world-renowned Genes & Health research programme, investigating health and disease in British Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. The postholder will perform research in a prestigious award from the Medical Research Council, designating us a Longitudinal Population Study, in which KCL is leading on mental health and cognition assessments of >25,000 participants. The role will be enthusiastically supported by Genes & Health leadership team and collaborators across KCL and QMUL, external scientific partners and NHS organisations. The postholder will be embedded within the multidisciplinary Genes & Health team and the KCL Mental Health BioResource theme, who work cohesively together, and the post will be well-supported with training and professional development.

Our study will focus on common mental health disorders and conditions, namely depression and anxiety in this group, as well as cognition. The research will focus on developing, optimizing, and delivering questionnaires and enabling a wide array of psychology, psychiatric, and genetic research. The post-holder will be encouraged to develop their own research ideas. This work will help provide a deeper understanding of disorder and disease mechanisms in this recontactable community-based cohort, with available high quality linked electronic health and genetic data, including GWAS and exome sequencing data. This research will platform further ground-breaking research aimed at improving mental health treatments in this community.

About the role:

We seek to recruit a postdoctoral researcher and analyst for the Genes and Health LPS Study Mental Health Project that aims to carry out detailed, online mental health and cognitive assessment of a cohort of >25,000 individuals from the Genes & Health study. This project is being carried out by King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, and King’s Health Partners.

The successful candidate will need to lead and engage with initiatives to establish and build relationships with the Genes & Health study to roll out a new arm of the project, for mental health and cognition. We seek to hire a candidate who is personable and able to work collaboratively to carry out research in underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups. Aside from data analyses, there is potential to facilitate Patient and Public Involvement & Engagement sessions with relevant communities to discuss the design, implementation and dissemination of the research. The postholder will be supported in this work by the experienced Genes & Health team, including bilingual staff, but due to the sensitive nature of these community sessions, we will require the chosen candidate to possess good interpersonal communication skills, to handle these conversations with professionalism and care.

The post-holder may also supervise junior staff and assist in the submission of ethics applications, including protocols and amendments, hosting meetings and presentations to update on the project progress. It will be the post-holder’s overall duty to lead on day-day aspects of this project, and to facilitate its success.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract for 2 years initially.

About you:

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

Essential criteria

Desirable criteria

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.

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

Further information:

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.

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

Grade and Salary: £44,355 - £49,128 per annum, including London Weighting Allowance
Job ID: 111587
Close Date: 15-Apr-2025
Contact Person: Professor Gerome Breen or Gursharan Kalsi
Contact Details: Gerome.breen@kcl.ac.uk / Gursharan.kalsi@kcl.ac.uk