Senior Researcher/Programme Manager – Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) 212 views1 applications

Job Number: SR002/2018
Position Title: Senior Researcher/Programme Manager – Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Position Type: 2 Year Contract (renewable)
Application deadline: Friday, 30 November 2018, midnight GMT

About Africa’s Voices Foundation

Africa’s Voices Foundation (AVF) is a non-profit start-up, spun out of ongoing cutting-edge research at the University of Cambridge. We conduct innovative research and produce powerful, insightful evidence that helps to amplify the voices of Africans towards key policymakers and service deliverers.

We use media forums to we spark inclusive, interactive discussions, and gather audience opinions through SMS, instant messaging, and social media. We analyse these conversations – often in low-resource local languages – using our own tested methods. We combine social science frameworks with data science techniques to provide powerful insights into the beliefs, ideas and priorities of hard-to reach populations and social groups, and how these change over time. Our evidence helps organisations to better understand, engage with, and respond to target populations.

Our core business is organised in two program areas: Governance & Accountability, and, Citizen Evidence for Social Change. To date we have worked across health, education, humanitarian, governance, livelihoods, security and agriculture domains for a range of partners including UNICEF, Oxfam, Mastercard Foundation, World University Service Canada, Livity Africa, Well Told Story, REACH and BBC Media Action.

AVF combines rigorous academic research and a commitment to innovation with real-world impact. We provide our researchers with a vibrant interface for engaging with world-leading university research. Team members often work with faculty, advisors, external researchers, and student interns to bring the latest ideas into our working practices. Our work has been recognised internationally, including being awarded the Market Research Society’s ‘President’s Medal’ in 2016 for our work with UNICEF in Somalia. We are based in Nairobi, Kenya, with a small but highly qualified and motivated team that we are seeking to grow in the coming period. More at www.africasvoices.org.

Job Summary

The Senior Programme Manager/Researcher – SBCC will lead AVF’s program on Citizen Evidence for Social Change (CESC). The post-holder’s technical and programmatic expertise will drive AVF’s innovative and high-quality social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) work, ethically grounded in valuing citizen voice. Drawing on unique applied project experience, s/he will engage our current and prospective partner organisations to design successful evidence-based programming engagements that ensure value-for-money in shaping partner decisions and community outcomes. With capabilities in program design and project management, s/he will oversee and support successful EBSC project teams.

The post-holder will position AVF as uniquely innovative in the SBCC field by employing, adapting and re-thinking its interactive media based approaches to collective discussion-led social change. S/he will bring to bear their understanding of how media-driven community/citizen engagement, when combined with citizen-generated evidence, can be a powerful approach for evidence-based social change. The post-holder will also be a senior member of the Research, Design & Analysis technical team, providing technical and managerial inputs to developing team capacity, tools, methods and quality assurance practices. The Senior Programme Manager – SBCC, by collaborating with advisors and academics at Cambridge and elsewhere, will contribute to developing innovative methodologies and research approaches; communicating research insights to stakeholders; and producing and disseminating new knowledge through publications, conferences, and seminars (including AVF’s summer ‘Academy’).

Conditions

AVF offers a competitive salary using a single international salary scheme that recognises experience, qualifications and demonstrated excellence at the relevant salary level. The salary range for Senior Programme Managers is GBP 37,000 – 44,000. At present, AVF does not offer additional benefits. However, this policy is currently under review.

Selection Criteria

Essential

Education and Work Experience

• A postgraduate degree (Masters or PhD) in a relevant discipline (such as social psychology, sociology, development studies, public health) with strong theoretical and methodological understanding of empirical social and behaviour research.
• Minimum 3-5 years of relevant experience in designing, managing and delivering high-quality projects applied to social issues, specifically around social and behavioural change in developing world contexts.
• Knowledge of the African media landscape and/ or media development.

Project Management Experience

• Ability to prioritise and manage multiple projects simultaneously, and follow through on issues in a timely manner.
• Strong background in the management of research teams, providing training to researchers, and monitoring research projects.
• Strong client orientation and proven ability to work with social development actors (governmental and non-governmental).
• Ability to identify problems, provide technical support, build collaboration and arrive at solutions.

Research Expertise and Skills

• Substantial experience in managing Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning frameworks for media and social and behaviour change projects, including design of theories of change, management of logframes and development of measurement indicators.
• Experience working with, qualitative methods and analysis (such as focus group discussions, thematic analysis, grounded theory or digital ethnography).
• Experience in social research design, especially using qualitative and mixed methods.
• Demonstrable experience of undertaking research that has had a clear policy and social impact.
• Ability to innovate through rigorous research in challenging applied contexts.
• Willingness to work with and innovate on digital methods, in collaboration with data scientists.

External Relations and Programme Leadership

• Successful track record in securing research or grant funding for projects in areas of social development, preferably social and behaviour change communications.
• Demonstrated success building and growing client partnerships.
• Excellent communication skills with internal and external stakeholders, including donors, consortia partners, media partners and research teams.
• Demonstrable experience presenting at international academic and industry conferences in the area of social and behaviour change communications.

Personal Attributes and Language Competencies

• High levels of energy, initiative, and flexibility in quickly adjusting to changing work requirements.
• Aptitude for and willingness to work in client-facing contexts, focused on delivering research value-add.
• Clear and confident communicator of research design and findings to non-specialist and practitioner audiences.

Desirable

• Knowledge of social innovation/ICT.

Understanding and experience working with quantitative methods, including statistical analysis and statistical programming languages such as R or STATA.

• Exposure to, interest in, and some understanding of techniques for analysing textual data such as text mining, topic modelling and supervised machine learning.
• Track record of publications (academic or professional) and interest to contribute to collaborative outputs with University-based collaborators.
• Working knowledge of languages relevant to the African context besides English.
• Technical understanding of user interfaces and digital platforms.
• Knowledge and understanding of data visualisation techniques.
• Legal authorisation to work in Kenya

Travel Requirements

• The location of the post will be Nairobi, Kenya. The post holder should be prepared to travel for up to 30% percent of their time to other African countries, the UK or elsewhere.