Research Assistant in Religion, Development and Conflict in India

Hours: Variable Hours (260 hours in total)

Contract Type: Fixed-term until 28 February 2026

The Department of Sociology is seeking a Research Assistant who will play an active role on the John Fell Fund project titled ‘Exploring role of religion in development and conflict in India: A micro and macro analysis’.

The project aims to understand how religion impacts socioeconomic outcomes in the modern world. Existing economic and social research has focussed largely on the potential impacts of Christianity and Islam for their followers. However, relatively limited attention has been paid to understanding the impact of eastern origin religions such as Hinduism that differ in several religious and cultural aspects from Abrahamic religions. This project seeks to fill this research gap by generating novel causal evidence on how religious beliefs under Hinduism affect development and broader social dynamics in context of India. The project will primarily rely on secondary micro and macro datasets for analysis.

About the Role

Reporting to the Principal Investigator, Dr Prashant Poddar, the post holder will play an active role in day-to-day management of the project. They will primarily be responsible for data collection related to the project using data scrapping techniques and the use of API’s. They would also collect data through secondary research and engage in data linking and pre-processing as well. They will also have the opportunity to work with established microeconomic survey datasets for secondary research. In addition, the post holder will also collect some qualitative information on religious context of India.

This is a fixed-term variable hours position (260 hours in total) until 28 February 2026.  The position is available from April 2025, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Application Process

The closing date for applications is 12:00 midday UK time on Friday 14 March 2025 with interviews taking place on Wednesday 02 April 2025. 

You will be required to upload a CV, supporting statement and details of two referees as part of your online application. Your supporting statement should clearly set out the extent to which you meet each of the selection criteria of the post.

Please note that this position does not meet the Home Office requirements for a Certificate of Sponsorship application.

Further details for this position, including information on how to apply, are outlined in the job description.

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