King's College London

About us

The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London is one of the oldest law schools in England and recognised globally as one of the best law schools in the world. The School was established in 1831 and has played an integral role in the life of King's since the university was formed almost 200 years ago.​​​​​​​ The School is based in the East Wing of Somerset House on King's Strand Campus in London.

The Centre for Data Futures, established in 2024, pioneers participatory infrastructure across the entire AI lifecycle. We envision a future where communities actively shape the AI systems that affect their lives and maintain agency over the data generated.

About the role

We are recruiting a Research Fellow in participatory methods to work within the Centre for Data Futures (CDF) at King’s College London. The postholder will lead the participatory refinement workstream of the NAVIGATE research programme, funded by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.

NAVIGATE investigates how different modes of AI uncertainty expression affect the quality of human reasoning, in particular the capacity for genuine engagement with views that differ from one’s own (what the programme terms “doxastic plasticity”). Its first phase worked with synthetic data and used simulated LLM-to-LLM conversations. The uncertainty-scaffolding strategies it tested did not differ in how much they shifted the simulated users’ stances, but in the quality of engagement they sustained (Greco et al., 2026, arXiv:2606.05890).

The postholder will first help develop and complete NAVIGATE’s second (human) phase. This tests the programme’s ethical dilemmas and scaffolding strategies with KCL students as well as online participants, working closely with the Centre’s NLP PDRA and Prof Yulan He (KCL Institute for AI) on the technical pipeline.

Building on the second phase, the postholder will then turn these strategies (perspective-multiplying, tension-preserving and process-reflecting) into a working participatory layer through which communities can collectively assess and reshape how an LLM expresses uncertainty. We begin with professional communities (e.g. GPs, educators and legal practitioners), but the wider aim is to allow any community to shape how the AI systems it depends on handle doubt and disagreement.

At that stage, the Research Fellow will design and facilitate co-design sessions with these communities, develop methods to evaluate what the sessions achieve, and lead the specification of a public-facing demonstrator built with design-engineering collaborators at Imperial College London (Prof Rafael Calvo). They will also work with the Centre’s Data Empowerment Clinic, so that community refinement of AI systems does not become a new form of data extraction.

This is a full time (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 30/06/2028,  starting on 1 January 2027 (with possibility of extension, depending on further research funding).

We are interested in researchers whose work intersects with “participation”, and will consider candidates with a PhD in a variety of fields, including experimental and quantitative social sciences, human-computer interaction (HCI), design research, experimental psychology, digital humanities, health services research, education, public policy research, or science and technology studies. 

We seek candidates with a demonstrated track record of research with human participants, ideally including both experimental studies and participatory or co-design methods. No programming expertise is required. 

The postholder should have experience of coordinating research projects and supervising junior researchers, and a record of published research in peer-reviewed journals or other research outputs.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1.      PhD qualified in relevant subject area (or pending results) including experimental and quantitative social sciences, human-computer interaction (HCI), design research, experimental psychology, digital humanities, health services research, education, public policy research, or science and technology studies.

2.      Proven experience of designing and facilitating participatory, co-design / deliberative research with professional / community groups

3.      Experience of designing and running experimental or survey studies with human participants, including online recruitment

4.      Expertise in quantitative or qualitative analysis of human participant data (e.g. questionnaire responses and conversation or group discussion transcripts)

5.      Proven research experience, as evidenced by publications in peer-reviewed journals, as a book chapter or other research output.

6.      Demonstrated interest in LLMs, and ability to work with computer scientists and designers to turn research findings into the specification of an interactive system

7.      Experience leading work packages of a research grant/s or coordinating research projects.

8.      Experience supervising junior researchers (e.g. research assistants / students)

Desirable criteria

1.      Experience of research with healthcare, legal or education professionals

2.      Experience of preparing research ethics applications or pre-registering studies involving human participants

3.      Familiarity with data governance, data stewardship or data trusts

4.      Hands-on familiarity with LLMs, for example prompt design or the evaluation of model outputs

5.      Experience in presenting research to non-specialist (e.g., policy or practitioner) audiences

Full details of the role and the skills and experience required, can be found in the attached job description which provided on the next page.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and we recognise its growing role in professional work. Applicants may use AI tools to support preparation of their application, for example to research the role or structure written responses. However, applications must reflect the applicant’s own work and experience. AI tools should not be used during interviews or assessment activities unless this has been agreed in advance as a reasonable adjustment. Further guidance on the use of AI in recruitment can be found  here.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘ How we Recruit’ pages.

Interviews are due to be held on 28th October 2026