Research Assistant - PATHWAYS

About us

The Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is the only such Department in the UK, with 7 professors, 1 Reader and 6 Senior Lecturers comprising its substantive academic staff.  The Department will shortly move into the  Pears Maudsley Centre, a £90M purpose-built clinical research facility co-locating the academic department and clinical colleagues from South London and Maudsley NGS Foundation Trust, with the purpose of enhancing translational research designed to improve the mental health of children and young people.  Its new Clinical Research Facility with cutting-edge equipment offers research opportunities that are unparalleled in the UK and Europe. The PATHWAYS study will be based in the Pears Maudsley Centre.

About the role

We are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic researcher for the high-profile PATHWAYS research programme on children and young people attending the UK Gender Services because of gender incongruence. PATHWAYS is a research programme with multiple workstreams whose aim is to understand young people with gender incongruence and assess the risks and benefits of interventions. The UK is currently the only country world-wide to undertake such comprehensive research in order to better understand best care for children and young people with gender incongruence. The researcher will work primarily on the observational study and clinical trial and will play a key role in recruiting young people and their families into the studies, and in the retention for longer-term follow-up. The research programme is multi-centre across the UK; although the researcher will be based in London, they will need to work closely across centres and may need to visit other centres and/or participants at home or in clinics.

This post involves working closely with a large team and the post-holder will be expected to work exclusively/most of the time in person, with base at the Denmark Hill campus but visiting other sites in the country as required.

This is a full-time post (35hours/week) and you will be offered a fixed term contract for 3 years with the possibility of extension. The earliest start date is 1st of February 2025.

About you

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

Essential criteria

• BSc in an area related to the cross-over between physical and mental health (or pending results)
• Experience in quantitative methods research including analytical techniques and/or qualitative methods
• Experience of using a research database
• Research or clinical experience with children or young people with mental health or physical health concerns
• Excellent attention to detail
• Excellent interpersonal skills to develop and maintain effective working relationships with both academics and individuals recruited to the study.
• Strong planning and organisational skills, including ability to work to and meet firm deadlines.
• Demonstrable experience in complying with data protection regulations / GDPR protocol

Desirable criteria

• Experience of longitudinal data collection
• Experience working on clinical trials and or directly with clinicians
• Experience in administration of cognitive assessments
• Experience working on multi-site studies
• Experience in writing and publishing research papers in high-quality journals

Further information 

We have the right to close the advert earlier than advertised if we receive a sufficient number of applications.

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