Research Fellow – 0.5 Part-time

Research Fellow – 0.5

Founded in 1902, UCL Institute of Education has been shaping policy and helping government, organizations and individuals navigate a changing society for the last 120 years. We embrace collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just, and have been ranked number one for education every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The Department of Culture, Communication and Media (CCM) is a department of UCL Institute of Education.

The post-holder will be located in the International Centre for Intercultural Studies. The Centre promotes intellectually rigorous, practically relevant and interdisciplinary Intercultural Studies that advance understanding of the role of culture in society, education and communication and inform intercultural practices and policy. Further details about the International Centre for Intercultural Studies can be found at

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/international-centre-intercultural-studies

About the LIL-ECHOES (Living Cultural Labs: Empowering Communities through Intercultural Encounters in Virtual Worlds) project

Funded by Horizon Europe, LIL-ECHOES is a 48-month Research and Innovation Action involving a 16-partner consortium across eight countries. The project will establish Living Cultural Labs in public cultural spaces in the UK, Germany, Greece, and Italy to investigate how Extended Reality (XR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are changing cultural life, language and communication, wellbeing, identity, heritage and social cohesion practices. Working with universities, museums, libraries, community organizations, public authorities, creative industries and technology partners, the project will generate new research evidence, inclusive XR and AI tools, design principles, open research resources and policy recommendations for ethical and culturally sustainable virtual worlds.

About the Role

You will work with the UCL project team to make a significant contribution to the first phase of the project led by the UCL team with the following aims:

• Developing a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding social interactions in extended reality (XR)
• Investigating how culture evolves in virtual communities through ethnographic research
• Examining the opportunities and challenges that XR and AI present for the cultural and creative industries

In addition, you will take a leading role in undertaking participatory ethnographic research to investigate social interactions, cultural practices, and community rituals in extended reality (XR) environments.

The role will involve securing access to research participants and field sites, undertaking participatory ethnographic fieldwork, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting ethnographic data including multimodal interactional data, and contributing to high-quality research publications and reports.

About You

You will demonstrate a commitment to the ethical and responsible use of extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI), with due regard to issues of privacy, informed consent, inclusion, and participant wellbeing in immersive and online research environments.

A completed PhD in intercultural communication, applied linguistics, human-computer interaction, digital humanities, heritage or museum studies or a relevant discipline is essential.

Your application form should address all the person specification points and should clearly demonstrate how your skills and experience meet each of the criteria.

It is important that the criteria are clearly numbered and that you provide a response to each one.

This post is funded from October 2026 until February 2028 in the first instance.

What We Offer

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday: 27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days (pro rata for part time staff)
• Additional 5 days' annual leave purchase scheme (pro rata for part time staff)
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance

Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits to find out more.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

As London's Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world's talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL's workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

Our faculty holds an Athena SWAN Silver award, in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality.