Postdoctoral Research Associate position University of Durham in United Kingdom

The Role

Applications are invited for a fixed – term part-time Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) position in the Department of Psychology at Durham University. The successful candidate will join the research project ‘Improving Primary Care Services For Imprisoned Women With Serious Mental Illness’ (IP-SIS) led by Professor Tammi Walker and funded by the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme. The IP-SIS project aims to gather qualitative information about how imprisoned women with serious mental illness (SMI) use primary care services and how these experiences are racially differentiated. These services include general practice, dentists, eye health (opticians) and pharmacists. The project will use interviews and focus groups to ask primary care practitioners who prov ide such services in women’s prisons, imprisoned women with a history of SMI, and health and non-clinical prison staff with experience of working with imprisoned women with SMI. The PDRA will work as part of a multidisciplinary team of psychologists, primary care and criminology specialists based at Durham and Keele. The successful candidate will work on all phases of the project, including recruitment, undertaking interviews and focus groups and completing analysis The successful candidate will have a strong academic track-record, including experience in designing, carrying out, analysing, and interpreting high quality qualitative methods.

This post is fixed term for 12 months until 30th April 2026. This is fixed according to the project end date agreed with the funder and is also covering maternity leave.

The post-holder is employed to work on research/a research project which will be led by Professor Tammi Walker. Whilst this means that the post-holder will not be carrying out independent research in his/her own right, the expectation is that they will contribute to the advancement of the project, through the development of their own research ideas/adaptation and development of research protocols.

Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post by 1st May 2025