Postdoctoral Researcher - City Government Innovation (gn)

To support research, analysis, and academic content development on city government, governance systems, and public sector innovation, we are seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher (gn) on a full-time basis (40 hours/week), with a contract initially limited until 30 June 2027, and the opportunity to extend for further years within the project duration.

The Postdoctoral Researcher will contribute to a major research and executive education initiative on city government innovation. Working with project faculty and international research partners at LSE Cities, they will conduct research on governance systems, city-level innovation and programme impact (70%), while also contributing to teaching materials, case development and selected teaching and facilitation activities (30%).

The position is particularly suited to candidates pursuing an academic career and offers opportunities to contribute to empirical research, indicator development, policy analysis and academic publications.

• Support the implementation of a research agenda on city government innovation, governance systems and institutional change in collaboration with academic colleagues and research partners.
• Develop and refine governance indicators and monitoring systems, supporting data collection, validation, reproducibility and comparative analysis across cities.
• Maintain and analyse national, regional and city-level indicator frameworks covering input, process, output and outcome dimensions.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative research on city government innovation, administrative capacity, governance practices and programme impact, using AI- and LLM-enabled tools for data analysis, coding, synthesis and triangulation where appropriate and ethically permissible.
• Contribute to reports, policy briefs, academic publications, working papers and other policy-oriented outputs.
• Translate research findings into teaching cases, city examples, classroom exercises, curriculum materials and other applied learning formats for executive education.
• Support the preparation and delivery of academic content, including classroom facilitation, group-work supervision, synthesis of participant insights and academic evaluation.
• Contribute to internal learning, reporting and impact assessment by translating research and programme insights into clear written outputs.

Essential Requirements:

• A completed PhD in political science, sociology, public policy, public administration, organisational studies, urban studies, governance studies or a related field.
• Strong qualitative and quantitative research skills, including experience with data analysis tools and the development and analysis of indicators, frameworks and empirical datasets.
• Excellent analytical writing skills, with the ability to contribute to academic publications, policy outputs and research-based teaching materials.
• Excellent communication and engagement skills, including experience working with senior practitioners and international participants.
• Ability to work effectively in diverse, international and multidisciplinary teams.
• Intellectual curiosity and the ability to engage with literature across social science disciplines.
• Excellent written and spoken English; additional languages are an asset

Desirable assets:

• A demonstrated research interest in cities, local government, governance systems, public-sector innovation, institutional change or related fields.
• Experience with dataset construction, data cleaning, metadata documentation, indicator validation and reproducible analytical workflows.
• Experience conducting comparative research.
• Experience using LLMs and AI-assisted methods responsibly to analyse large volumes of mixed qualitative and documentary data.
• Knowledge of research ethics, anonymisation, data protection, informed consent and the responsible handling of practitioner data.
• Experience in case or curriculum development, teaching, facilitation or executive education.

• 30 days paid holidays per year and up to 20 days workation possible
• Good Traffic Connections
• Flexible Working Hours
• International and diverse work environment
• Commuter Ticket
• Mobile working possible

STBL1_DE