Academic Placements

The Nuffield Trust offers a limited number of academic placements at any one time to exceptional people who can demonstrate an interest in our areas of research.

You will work alongside us for a period of three to six months either in our policy, quantitative research or economics teams. You will be expected already to have research skills and be able to work under supervision but using your own initiative. At the end of your placement we would expect that you would have your name on at least one of our renowned research reports as recognition of your contribution during your time with us.

As you will appreciate, we are looking for exceptional candidates. 

You will have an excellent academic record: your first degree should be a high Upper Second or preferably a First. You will then have undertaken some post-graduate research study in a field closely related to one of our research topics. You may have finished your Masters and be thinking about a PhD, or you may have already started or completed your PhD. In any case, we will expect you to be able to demonstrate how the academic work you have already completed is related to our work and to tell us your ideas for taking it forward.

We will expect you to be able to provide a strong academic reference and another personal one.

You will be based in our central London offices and we are flexible whether your placement is full or part time. Your placement can start at any time of the year and while you are with us we will involve you in as much of the life of the Trust as possible. You will be invited to all our seminars and encouraged to attend relevant events at other organisations.

You will be supported throughout your placement by your line manager and before you leave you will have an exit interview telling you honestly how we have assessed your research work. We won’t be able to offer you a job at the end, but we will respond to requests for references from prospective employers.

We will pay you a salary during your placement, but we can’t help you with visas, work permits or accommodation. You will need to be able to demonstrate that you are eligible to work in the UK to secure the placement.

How to apply

Please do not send us your CV at this stage. We know that you are a high-achiever and initially we want to find out if your area of interest matches our work programme. We turn down many excellent candidates – not because they aren’t very good researchers but because we can’t use them on our current projects. So please don’t contact us unless you understand what we’re looking for.

Complete the short application form. On the first page we ask for some basic information about you and your academic achievements. The second page is for you to write about research you have undertaken and why you believe this will be of interest to the Trust.

You should write concisely in clear, grammatically correct English. Please make sure that there aren’t any spelling mistakes and don’t attach extra documents. We are looking for you to refer to our recent and current work and to demonstrate how it has influenced your own studies.

Please send your completed application form to our HR department via email.

We will respond to your application to let you know it has arrived and we aim to inform you whether you are going through to the next stage within two weeks. If we like what we see we will ask for more detailed information about you and then invite you to an interview here at the Trust when you will be able to meet the team.