Short-Term Senior Researcher
The Program
The Department for International Development (DFID) has established the £355 million pound Girls' Education Challenge Fund (GEC) as a flexible funding mechanism aimed at providing a range of interventions in DFID partner countries to ensure that girls overcome the unique gender specific obstacles they face to enrolling, remaining in school and learning. Through this fund, DFID will finance projects that enable approximately 660,000 marginalised girls to complete a full six year cycle of primary school, or approximately one million marginalised girls to complete three years of secondary school.
Coffey has been contracted as the Evaluation Manager for the GEC, responsible for an evaluation of the fund as a whole. The GEC evaluation will track the results DFID delivers through the GEC Fund, improve DFID's understanding of what works and why in girls education, and disseminate new evidence to other governmental, private and donor organisations.
As the Evaluation Manager, Coffey is leading and managing a rigorous monitoring and evaluation framework designed to assess the effectiveness and impact of individual projects and the fund as a whole. It is applying a number of methods to help understand and assess the programme interventions within the different contexts. The Thematic Research task in particular is designed to allow for an in-depth understanding of the underlying factors hindering girls from going to school.
The Position
The short term Senior Researcher will help lead the Coffey thematic research team, working collaboratively with the Research Director. The Senior Researcher will participate in fieldwork for data collection and will be responsible for the write-up of interviews and resulting analysis for that data. The Senior Researcher will aid interpretation of findings in light of the wider literature in this area, and help quality assure the final report. The consultant will work to a high level of quality and rigor, to ensure that the final analysis produced is robust, relevant and thoughtful.
Fieldwork will be conducted in Kenya, Zimbabwe and DRC.
Specific tasks include:
- Briefing and preparation with the thematic research team (2 days);
- Consultation on field instruments and approach to fieldwork (2 days) ;
- Fieldwork in-country (14 days per country);
- Contributing to subsequent analysis and report writing (5 days).
- Any other reasonable task as required by the project manager or the team leader.
Total number of days: 23 – 51, depending on fieldwork participation
The Person
The ideal candidate will have a university degree in a relevant field and a strong qualitative research background with a gender or education focus. More specifically, the candidate will have:
- An advanced degree (PhD preferred) in social sciences (example: economics, gender studies, international development).
- At least 7-10 years of work experience in education research and/or qualitative research and activities (such as conducting in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, etc.).
- Thematic and qualitative fieldwork experience working on education and/or gender in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Willingness to travel to local communities and stay overnights in rural towns with the team.
Applications close:
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, and will not be considered after March 30th, 2015.
About Coffey
Coffey has a 40 year history in successfully delivering international development projects on behalf of donors right around the world, including Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, USAID and the UK's Department for International Development. Our people work side by side with local partners to support stability, economic growth and good governance, positively changing people's lives.
HOW TO APPLY:
To apply for this position: http://careers.coffey.com/cw/en/job/492479/shortterm-senior-researcher
