Department
The Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis (CeMPA) is hosted at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), a flagship department within the University of Essex, internationally recognised for excellence and expertise in quantitative social science and research methodologies. CeMPA is at the frontier of microsimulation modelling, with applications to tax-benefit analysis, life-course analysis, and complexity economics.
CeMPA’s research is critical to understanding the social distribution of life chances, through the analysis of the mechanisms that explain the entrenchment of social and health inequalities over time, and the short-, medium- and long-term effects of policies.
CeMPA’s research on distributional issues, from tax and benefit systems to family, gender, health, wellbeing, and population change, is focused around two tools developed over the years and offered open source to the scientific community, with a wide range of models and applications: the static tax-benefit microsimulation platform EUROMOD, now jointly developed with the European Commission, and the dynamic microsimulation platform JAS-mine. Together, they cover all areas in social science microsimulation, from tax-benefit to dynamic microsimulation and agent-based modelling.
Duties of the Role
The person appointed will contribute to the static and dynamic microsimulation models developed at CeMPA, and exploit them to pursue research objectives concerning the short, medium, and long term consequences of public policies on individual health and economic outcomes, and the resulting health and economic inequalities, also in light of major societal trends such as population ageing, immigration, and the green transition. Key areas of interest are distributional issues (economic and health inequalities, socio-economic determinants of health), the economics of ageing, social policy (ex-ante and ex-post evaluation, macro-challenges to the welfare state), and life course analysis (including intergenerational redistribution).
You will also help to produce research outputs for publication and disseminate the result of research and scholarship through appropriate activities inside and outside academia, such as participating in relevant national and international conferences and engagement events. In addition, you will have the opportunity to co-author papers and contribute to the development of the CeMPA research agenda.
A full list of duties and responsibilities can be found within the job pack.
Qualifications and Skills required
Applicants will hold a relevant doctoral level degree in in Computer Science or other computational disciplines (or be close to completion of PhD studies) or equivalent professional experience or practice.
A full list of applicant requirements can be found under the Person Specification section within the job pack.
This is a fixed-term, full-time research post for two years in the first instance in line with the grant funding.
At the University of Essex, internationalism and diversity is central to who we are and what we do. We are committed to being a cosmopolitan, internationally oriented university that is welcoming to staff and students from all countries, faiths and backgrounds, where you can find the world in one place.
To support this commitment we have our Global Forum, a staff-led network that promotes and celebrates the rich cultural diversity among Essex staff, and our Colchester campus based Faith Centre, which hosts regular services, meetings and events organised by our chaplains and faith representatives. For more information see: https://www.essex.ac.uk/life/student-facilities/religion-and-faith
Please see the attached job pack, which contains a full job description and person specification, which outlines the full duties, skills, qualifications and experience needed for this role plus more information relating to the post. We recommend you read this information carefully before making an application. Applications should be made on-line, but if you would like advice or help in making an application, or need information in a different format, please email the Resourcing Team (resourcing@essex.ac.uk).
*More information: Working at the University