Research Assistant - Data Management (46-month Temporary Contract)

The Role

Maynooth University is committed to a strategy in which the primary University goals of excellent research and scholarship and outstanding education are interlinked and equally valued.

We are seeking a research assistant with experience of qualitative social science data to work on the management, processing and archiving of a bi-lingual data collection to be collected for the “LINLOSS” project, funded through an ERC award to Professor Jane Gray. LINLOSS will collect a large body of complex data in Ireland and Poland, including unstructured life narratives, structured life histories, support genealogies and neighbourhood maps. Working closely with the Principal Investigator and all members of the LINLOSS research team, the research assistant will act as a data steward and oversee the implementation of the data management plan to ensure that the project complies with FAIR principles, GDPR legislation, and with university, national and international standards on research ethics, data protection and open research practices. They will be responsible for organising, documenting and archiving project data to a trusted digital repository. 

The research assistant will assist with the organization of workshops, conferences and other public events, and with the dissemination of project outputs. As a core member of the research team, they will contribute to presentations at national and international conferences, and to scholarly publications arising from the project.

Overview of the LINLOSS project

LINLOSS aims to understand how losses, disposals and dead-ends shape the direction of social change at moments of rupture, and to develop a formal theory of social loss. It will develop new explanations of how loss generates change at multiple, intersecting societal scales: in the transformation of cultural and institutional patterns across generations; within changing relationships across genealogies and social networks; and in the reconstruction of pasts and futures within biographies.

The ideal candidate will have:

Essential

• Applicants will have a Master’s degree, or level 9 equivalent qualification or 3 years relevant experience, in Sociology, Information Science, or a relevant cognate discipline
• Familiarity with ethical and research integrity practices in qualitative social science
• Knowledge about FAIR data and GDPR standards
• Familiarity with data management best practice, data archives and digital repositories for the social sciences and/or humanities
• Experience of organizing and disseminating events
• Excellent English language and writing skills

Desirable

• Familiarity with software for qualitative data analysis (e.g. MaxQDA)
• Familiarity with OpenRefine software for data cleaning
• Fluency in Polish.

For further details including full comprehensive job description please see reference number 031901 on the Maynooth University vacancies page at: www.maynoothuniversity.ie/human-resources/vacancies

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