______Oxford Martin School and Department of Public Health
Job description and selection criteria
Job title James Martin Fellow
Division Medical Sciences Division
Department Public Health (with affiliation to International Development)
British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group Group (BHF HPRG)
Location Old Road Campus, Headington, Oxford
Grade and salary Grade 7: £29,541 - £36,298 per annum
Hours 1.0FTE (equivalent to 37.5 hours per week)
Contract type Fixed-Term (36 months)
Probation period 1 year
Reporting to Dr Peter Scarborough
Closing Date 12 July 2013
Interview Date 25 July 2013
Vacancy reference 108212 Introduction
The University
The University of Oxford is a complex and stimulating organisation, which enjoys an international reputation as a world-class centre of excellence in research and teaching. It employs over 10,000 staff and has a student population of over 21,000.
Most staff are directly appointed and managed by one of the University’s 130 departments or other units within a highly devolved operational structure - this includes 5,900 ‘academic- related’ staff (postgraduate research, computing, senior library, and administrative staff) and 2,820 ‘support’ staff (including clerical, library, technical, and manual staff). There are also over 1,600 academic staff (professors, readers, lecturers), whose appointments are in the main overseen by a combination of broader divisional and local faculty board/departmental structures. Academics are generally all also employed by one of the 38 constituent colleges of the University as well as by the central University itself.
Our annual income in 2010/11 was £919.6m. Oxford is one of Europe's most innovative and entrepreneurial universities: income from external research contracts exceeds £376m p.a., and more than 70 spin-off companies have been created.
For more information please visit www.ox.ac.uk
The Medical Sciences Division
The Medical Sciences Division is an internationally recognized centre of excellence for biomedical and clinical research and teaching, and the largest academic division in the University of Oxford.
World-leading programmes, housed in state-of-the-art facilities, cover the full range of scientific endeavour from the molecule to the population. With our NHS partners we also foster the highest possible standards in patient care.
For more information please visit: http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk
The Oxford Martin School is a unique, interdisciplinary research community of over 300 scholars working to address the most pressing global challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. The Oxford Martin School was founded at the University of Oxford in 2005. It was made possible through the vision and generosity of Dr James Martin, who made the largest benefaction to Oxford in its almost 900-year history, to establish the School. For 25 years James Martin was the highest-selling author of books on computing and related technology. He published 67 books with Prentice-Hall, the world’s leading textbook publisher. Many of his books were seminal works that changed perceptions in the Information Technology (IT) industry. The revenue from his books, associated lectures and videos provided the funds for establishing the Oxford Martin School, which has rapidly grown into a global centre for interdisciplinary scholarship and thinking about the future.
From the governance of geoengineering and the possibilities of quantum physics, to the future of food and the implications of our ageing population, the Oxford Martin School supports over 30 individual research teams from across the University of Oxford to consider some of the biggest questions that concern our future.
2 The School’s research is helping to anticipate better the consequences of our collective actions, and influence policy and behaviour accordingly. We aim to develop new approaches to some of the most intractable questions. In fact, to be funded by the School, scholars must demonstrate that their research will have an impact beyond academia and will make a tangible difference to any of today’s significant global challenges.
The Oxford Martin School Future of Food programme
The Oxford Martin School has funded an interdisciplinary Programme on the Future of Food. Its aim is to stimulate and link together research at Oxford on the food system, defined here as including all aspects of the production, processing and consumption of food, as well as their social, economic, environmental and health consequences. The Programme aims to do three things: 1. To link, through a website (http://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk), all researchers at Oxford who work on the food system or whose work touches on this area, and provide a single portal for people outside Oxford to see what research in this field takes place here. 2. Through workshops and other activities to link Oxford researchers with policy makers involved in the food system. 3. Fund a small number of innovative, interdisciplinary research projects to stimulate new research at Oxford on the food system.
N.B. The advertised position is for a researcher to work on an interdisciplinary research project incorporating public health, international development, environmental change and agricultural economics. The project’s expert team consists of researchers drawn from the Department of Public Health, the Department of International Development and the School of Geography and the Environment. The recruitment process is facilitated by the Department of Public Health, based in the Medical Sciences Division of the University of Oxford, and the recruited researcher will be based in the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group – a research group within the Department of Public Health.
The Department of Public Health
The Department of Public Health is a department of the Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford. It is based at Old Road Campus, Headington. In the 2008 national Research Assessment Exercise, 65% of the Department’s research was awarded world-leading and internationally excellent ratings.
The department provides a strong environment of multi-disciplinary research and teaching and includes distinguished groups and units such as the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, the Health Economics Research Centre, the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, the Ethox Centre, the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies, the Unit of Healthcare Epidemiology and the Health Services Research Unit and the UK satellite for the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Review Group.
The Head of Department is Professor Ray Fitzpatrick, who has an international reputation in the field of health status and outcomes measurement. In addition to its research activities, the Department is home to the MSc in Global Health Science. Students also come to undertake research for DPhil and MSc degrees. Teaching is provided for undergraduates reading for Medicine and Public Health doctors and specialists in training.
For more information please visit: http://www.dph.ox.ac.uk
3 The successful candidate will also be affiliated to the Department of International Development. For more information please visit: http://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk
Old Road Campus
The University’s Old Road Campus is located in Headington, approximately 1½ miles from Oxford city centre near the Churchill Hospital, 10 minutes walk from local banks and supermarkets and has four excellent subsidised staff restaurants on site.
The site was acquired by the University in 1995 to allow the development of its multi- disciplinary, health-related research and teaching. The campus is shared with a number of other University Groups – most notably the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, the Clinical Trials Service Unit, the Cancer Epidemiology Unit, the Department of Oncology, the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Jenner Institute, with the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and other groups due to move here later this year.
Car parking is very restricted on the site with only a small percentage of staff being granted an annual parking permit. However bus services have recently been improved and Bus Pass, Train Pass and Season Ticket Loan Schemes are all in operation for staff.
Job description
The British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group
The British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group (BHF HPRG) is one of several research groups and units within the Department of Public Health of the University of Oxford. The Group is core-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). The Group also receives programme and project funding from the BHF, other health related charities, UK research councils and UK government departments. The Group does not seek or accept funding for its research from food manufacturers and retailers, or from pharmaceutical, alcohol or tobacco companies.
The overall aim for the Group is to carry out research of the highest methodological quality that has the greatest possible influence on public health policy and practice, as it relates to the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
The Group’s research has, since its establishment, two themes: 1. Cardiovascular disease epidemiology 2. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease
In the past few years it has identified a new (third) theme that is: 3. Health promotion and environmental sustainability
This post will primarily contribute to the ‘health promotion and environmental sustainability’ theme. Further information on the work of the BHF HPRG can be found on our website at: www.dph.ox.ac.uk/bhfhprg.
The post
The recruited James Martin Fellow will be a researcher on a three-year project funded by the Oxford Martin Future of Food programme. The project aims to bring together different modelling techniques from the fields of agricultural economics, environmental change and public health to consider social, health and environmental outcomes of future scenarios of global food production. The project aims to explore the following research questions: how will current 4 trends in population growth, economic growth and environmental change affect dietary health, environment and development? How will global trade interventions affect dietary health, environment and development?
The modelling that will be conducted as part of this project will develop bespoke modules to a global food trade model (e.g. IMPACT, Globiom) that will estimate the effect of regional changes in food production and global food trade patterns on country-level life expectancy, agricultural employment and food-related greenhouse gas emissions. The project will be overseen by an expert group including Dr Mike Rayner and Dr Pete Scarborough (experts in diet-related chronic disease), Prof Doug Gollin (expert in agricultural economics), Tara Garnett (expert in the environmental impact of the food production) and Dr Paola Ballon-Fernandez (expert in poverty in lower and middle income countries).
The successful candidate will be line managed by Dr Pete Scarborough, Programme Leader for the Public Health & Environmental Sustainability research programme within the BHF HPRG. The post will be sited within the Department of Public Health, however due to the interdisciplinary nature of the work that will be conducted the successful candidate will also be affiliated with the Department of International Development where two of the expert team (Prof Doug Gollin and Dr Paola Ballon-Fernandez) are based.
The recruited James Martin Fellow will be responsible for the work conducted for the Future of Food modelling project. This includes developing and conducting modelling studies, presenting results at national and international conferences, producing first drafts of papers to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals and producing first drafts of funding applications. Support will be via the expert team which will meet quarterly throughout the project, and from the line manager.
Selection Criteria
Essential: A PhD (or exceptionally a Masters) in a field related to public health, economics or environmental sciences Knowledge of the role of the food system in nutrition, economics or environmental change Demonstration of strong quantitative research skills Previous experience of modelling projects
Desirable: A strong track record of publications Experience of working on interdisciplinary projects Experience of drafting funding applications Experience of working with models directly relevant to the Future of Food modelling project
Working at the University of Oxford For further information about working at Oxford, please see: www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/jobs/research/
How to apply If you consider that you meet the selection criteria, click on the Apply Now button on the ‘Job Details’ page and follow the on-screen instructions to register as a user. You will then be required to complete a number of screens with your application details, relating to your skills and experience. 5 When prompted, please provide details of three referees and indicate whether we can contact them at this stage. You must also be required to upload a CV and covering letter.
The covering letter should describe what you have been doing over at least the last 10 years. This may have been employment, education, or you may have taken time away from these activities in order to raise a family, care for a dependant, or travel for example. Your application will be judged solely on the basis of how you demonstrate that that you meet the selection criteria outlined above and we are happy to consider evidence of transferable skills or experience which you may have gained outside the context of paid employment or education.
Please save all uploaded documents to show your name and the document type.
All applications must be received by midday on the closing date stated in the online advertisement.
Checklist for applicants
In order for your application to be considered you must include the following:
a completed online application form details of referees an uploaded CV an uploaded covering letter
Should you experience any difficulties using the online application system, please email [email protected]
To return to the online application at any stage, please click on the following link www.recruit.ox.ac.uk
Please note that you will be notified of the progress of your application by automatic e-mails from our e-recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk mail regularly to ensure that you receive all e-mails.
Information for Priority Candidates
A priority candidate is a University employee who is seeking redeployment owing to the fact that he or she has been advised that they are at risk of redundancy, or on grounds of ill- health/disability. Priority candidates are issued with a redeployment letter by their employing departments and this letter must be attached to any application they submit. Please also email us at [email protected] to notify us of any priority application that is submitted.
The priority application date for this post is midday on 26 June 2013.
Full details of the priority application process are available at: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/personnel/end/red/redproc/prioritycandidate
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