Leapfrog Research Associate (A2612)

Scaling Up Leapfrog: Improving a million creative conversations

Imagination Lancaster seeks to appoint a Research Associate in Design to work on an AHRC funded project titled “Leapfrog: Improving a million creative conversations”. Scaling up Leapfrog is a one year follow-on project from the original Leapfrog project which used co-design to develop new creative consultation tools, techniques and approaches. In Scaling Up Leapfrog we are working with a new set of partners to adapt the resources developed in the original Leapfrog project at www.leapfrog.tools as the basis for new adaptations of these tools with new partners to reach a different set of beneficiaries at a far larger scale. 

Led by Professor Leon Cruickshank at Lancaster University, the role will involve close collaboration with community groups, public sector bodies and citizens to adapt and test these new ways of engagement at scale. You will help design the processes that enable this co-design as well as contributing to the design of the creative consultation approaches and tools themselves. This will involve working with communities in Lancaster and the wider Lancashire region as well as occasional work further afield in the UK. The resulting tools will be shared across the UK for wider evaluation. You will be working in a team of experts in digital design, consultation and evaluation, complimenting your skills in creative engagement and workshop design.

You will possess a PhD (or working towards a PhD or have equivalent research experience) in a field relevant to design, engagement, participatory design or co-design. They will be experienced in developing creative workshops or other community engagement activities. We are looking for an energetic, dynamic, self-directed and committed individual with a genuine interest in the role, and helping the process of consultation between communities and public services be more creative and more effective. 

ImaginationLancaster is an internationally recognised design and innovation research centre in Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA). We conduct applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions. We work across traditional boundaries, linking disciplines and collaborating with organisations and universities nationally and internationally. Our work involves both experimental blue-sky conceptual development, as well as applied research that create pathways from the laboratory to the marketplace. 

For an informal discussion about the post, please contact Professor Leon Cruickshank (L.Cruickshank@lancaster.ac.uk). For general information about ImaginationLancaster and Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), please visit imagination.lancaster.ac.uk and www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/LICA

This is a Part-Time, Fixed Term post for a period of six months.

We welcome applications from people in all diversity groups.

Closing Date: 05 Apr 2019
Category: Research