The post holder will be responsible for executing a programme of work on poverty and the poor law in Wales from 1834 to 1930 as agreed with the funder, The Arts and Humanities Research Council.

This is a full time post. However, requests for part-time working, flexible working and job share will be considered, taking into account at all times the operational needs of the Department.

A combination of onsite and home working is available, and applicants should be able to regularly travel to our Kew site for necessary meetings and work.

• Collecting (digital imaging) and or sampling sources and a substantial element of transcription of handwritten, typed or printed primary source material.
• The post holder will capture the views and life stories of Welsh paupers, the wider poor and their advocates; and the same of the parochial, union, and central poor law authorities, as well as statistical and operational data.
• They will undertake analysis of materials collected including coding and geocoding, linguistic and corpus analysis, qualitative, and quantitative analysis as required.
• They will also have substantial volunteer liaison and management experience of working with volunteer editors (and their development) in the production of historical New Poor Law data sets.
• They will take on a full range of public engagement activities including public presentations (solo and in collaboration with the research principal and co-investigators), and social and other media engagement.

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

• Educated to PhD or equivalent (in experience and publications) in a relevant discipline.
• Demonstrable detailed knowledge of the relevant poor law related archival collections at both The National Archives and local / county archives and the ability to deal with the complex palaeography these original 19th and early 20th century archival documents present.
• Significant experience of authoring written outputs including writing books (either as a solo or co-author), writing peer reviewed articles, and writing and compiling research resources.
• Demonstrable experience of creating historical datasets from a varied archival series, coding and geocoding the same and presenting the data in paper and in online environments.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and negotiation skills, and therefore able to interact well and build effective relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Demonstrable ability and experience to engage and persuade stakeholders (for example, archive managers, volunteer managers, and volunteers).