Category: Professional/Management | Faculty: Research & Enterprise Services | Department: Research Services | Closing Date: 01 Jun 2016 |
(This is a part-time post (up to 80%) fixed term until December 2018)
This is a very exciting opportunity for a candidate looking for a rewarding and challenging role, who can bring relevant administrative experience and skills to the job.
You will be an organised administrator, a creative and strategic thinker and a responsive team player with excellent communication skills. You will have previously worked in either a university, preferably in a Research Office, or in a similar research environment and will have substantial experience of research management and the research funding landscape. You will have demonstrable skills in working with academics and professional staff to provide integrated support to develop research proposals, keeping abreast of research funding opportunities, communicating this to the research community, and maintaining an overview of the University’s research expertise.
Although part of a wider team supporting research development in science and technology, this post will support the Physics Department and you will need flexibility to work across a number of different activities. You will have the ability to quickly establish strong links with key academics and colleagues specifically within the Physics Department and more widely within Faculties and Professional Services to build networks across the University. This will require you to work effectively as part of dynamic teams that can operate successfully in a complex and changing environment in order to multi-task and to meet deadlines and service standards.
You must have financial awareness and a good understanding of the key elements of costing and pricing. You must be well-organised and possess the ability to work effectively under pressure with poise and professionalism. A postgraduate qualification in physics or a relevant discipline would be an advantage but is not essential.
We welcome applications from people in all diversity groups.
Further Details
The University
Lancaster University is firmly established as one of the UK’s top universities, recognised as a world player in research and teaching. We are consistently highly ranked in the UK’s major university league tables – The Complete University Guide (9th), The Guardian (10th) and The Times/Sunday Times (12th). We are in the top 1% of universities globally, and rose to 131st place in the most recent Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
Over a sustained period the University has performed strongly in UK research ranking exercises. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), 83% of its research was rated as world leading (35%) or internationally excellent (48%).
The University has a strong commitment to business engagement, with extensive involvement in collaborative research, consultancy, economic regeneration and training and has helped to create more than 4000 new jobs.
The University provides excellent facilities for its 12,000 students and 3,000 staff, having invested over £450 million in the campus to create new academic facilities, student social facilities and improved teaching spaces. The last five years have seen the creation of a new centre for the Creative Arts, a brand new Sports Centre and a state-of-the-art Engineering building. Work is underway on an extensive building redevelopment project for our Department of Chemistry that will provide custom-designed spaces for teaching and research. Our student accommodation has won the National Student Housing award for 'Best University Halls' for five years running. Lancaster University is situated in a pleasant parkland campus with easy bike, bus or car transport to the town.
Lancaster is establishing a global presence through partnerships and currently has around 4000 students registered at our overseas strategic partnerships in India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Ghana.
Strategy and Vison
The University has recently published an ambitious strategy for 2020. Our vision is to become a university that is globally significant – a leader in higher education that provides the highest quality research and teaching, and engages locally and internationally on the issues and debates of the day and future. Driven by research, and stimulating learning, the globally significant university informs and changes practice and thinking worldwide.
Lancaster University has set itself the strategic goal of diversifying and increasing its research income to £45m per annum by 2020. This would cement the University’s place among the country’s top research intensive universities. We are doing this this from a position of strength having made real and conspicuous gains in the latest Research Excellence Framework where we stand 10th in terms of 4* outputs and 13th for the research environment. We have also been very successful in drawing down European and national economic regeneration funding to deliver research infrastructure and outcomes which has helped significantly boost the returns from the Higher Education Innovation Fund. In the context of our 50th anniversary, we have invested in 150 new academic posts, and we have recently reviewed how we support research with a particular focus on winning external income. The core conclusions were to invest in specialist roles in two key areas: research development and impact.
To find out more about the University please visit: www.lancaster.ac.uk
Research Services
The Research Services is part of Lancaster University’s Research and Enterprise Services Division and plays a key role in helping the University achieve our strategic goals by providing expert advice, guidance and administrative support to the University’s research community in the development of bids for externally funded research. The Research Services teams provide a range of research development and support activities including advice on funders’ terms and conditions, proposal preparation, costing and pricing, impact, ethics and post-award grant administration.
We are currently seeking to recruit a number of highly motivated research development officers to work in close partnership with the research development team to support a range of research grant funding processes andto advise and support faculty staff to ensure that our proposals are of the highest quality.