Research Associate

We have an exciting opportunity for a Research Associate to make a leading contribution to a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation – Understanding and Developing User-Focussed Tribunal Hearings – working with Professor Chris Gill and Professor Tom Mullen. The successful candidate will also be expected to contribute to the formulation and submission of research publications and research proposals as well as help manage and direct this complex and challenging project as opportunities allow.

Every year, UK tribunals hear hundreds of thousands of appeals against government decisions in important policy areas such as social security, housing, education, and immigration. Tribunals are crucial for realising access to justice, working in areas where citizens are often disadvantaged and disempowered in relation to the state. In this context, tribunals are expected to be user-focused institutions. User-focus suggests a central interest in meeting users’ needs, including by ensuring that tribunals are participative, informal, free from unnecessary technicality, and flexible. However, the idea that tribunals should be user-focused has – since the 1950s – stood in considerable tension with the notion that they are also judicial bodies conforming to principles of openness, fairness and impartiality. This tension continues to be a feature of tribunal policy, with the current system, created following major legislative reforms in the last 20 years, aiming to be both more judicial in character and more “user-focused”. How these countervailing aims have been pursued and how they might be achieved are questions at the heart of this proposal.

This research will address these questions by developing a bottom-up understanding of user-focus and exploring how tribunals – following legislative reform and an extensive modernisation programme – have sought to maintain and develop user-focused approaches. Ultimately, the project will explore and enhance user-focused approaches in tribunals, providing the first major tribunal study following legislative reform and contributing a novel lens through comparison between different chambers (social security, education, and housing) and different jurisdictions (Great Britain/ England and Scotland). 

You can find out more about the project on the Nuffield Foundation’s project page: www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/understanding-and-developing-user-focused-tribunal-hearings

The role would particularly suit someone with previous experience of researching socio-legal topics, but social scientists with appropriate methodological skills developed in other settings would also be well suited to the project.

Informal enquiries should be directed to Professor Chris Gill, Chris.Gill@glasgow.ac.uk

This post is full time and fixed term for up to 21 months.

For more information and to apply online: www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/research-associate-4

We believe that we can only reach our full potential through the talents of all. Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our values. Applications are particularly welcome from across our communities and in particular people from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, and other protected characteristics who are under-represented within the University. Read more on how the University promotes and embeds all aspects of equality and diversity within our community www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity.

We endorse the principles of Athena Swan www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity/athenaswan and hold bronze, silver and gold awards across the University.

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