Research Assistant

A 9-month fixed-term full time Research Assistant (RA) position is available at the Department of Psychology at Durham University. The successful candidate will join the research project NewSense led by Prof Marko Nardini and funded by the European Research Council. The project is studying people’s abilities to learn to use new sensory signals to augment their perceptual and motor skills. For example, people are trained to use new auditory or vibro-tactile cues to judge where objects are in space or what material they are made from. The work has applications to improving perception in people with sensory deficits, as well as to expanding the limits of perceptual experience and abilities in healthy people.

The project uses a combination of behavioural testing and neuroimaging. The role of the RA is to work as part of a larger team, assisting with collecting behavioural and neuroimaging data, mainly with healthy adults. This will include scheduling and coordinating participants, including those in long and complex follow-up studies. The RA will also help to refine experimental designs during piloting, and assist with some of the initial analysing and summarising of data.

The post will provide excellent research experience and training, including opportunities to gain experience in preparing data for publication and presenting results at conferences. While these are not requirements of the post, they are available for a post-holder who is looking to gain this experience.

For more information about the research, see:

• Prof Nardini’s web page at https://markonardini.webspace.durham.ac.uk/
• Summary of the ERC project at https://tinyurl.com/NewSenseAbs
• Related recent journal article at https://tinyurl.com/Negen2018

The successful applicant will carry out a range of duties, including assisting with piloting and developing studies, managing the recruitment and scheduling of participants (including for complex long-term training and follow-up protocols), running experimental tasks, carrying out some initial data analysis and interpretation, and summarising and presenting data for the other members of the research team. Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post in September 2024, but there is some flexibility around this date.

For a full description of the project and requirements, please see the detailed job specification via the “Apply now” link on this page.

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