Postdoctoral Research Associate – Grade 7

We are looking for a highly motivated individual to join the research element of a Liverpool City Council funded project: Increasing Access to Justice in Liverpool.

This is a collaborative project between the School of Law and Social Justice, Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Law Society, the Institute of Population Health Sciences, and third sector organisations in Liverpool. The project is led by Dr Jennifer Sigafoos and Dr James Organ, and co-investigator Dr Sophie Wickham.

The aim of the project is to provide a strong evidence base of the social impact of legal aid cuts and welfare reform in Liverpool. It will identify free legal help provision in Liverpool, and assess its effectiveness and impact on clients. The project will use participatory methods, including Community-based Systems Dynamics (CBSD) and quantitative methodologies to look at the impact of cuts to free legal advice services in Liverpool.

The project will expand understanding of how legal help provision works across Liverpool, if and how services are being used and what impact this has for client outcomes. The research will have two strands. First, the project will define legal advice and accurately identify legal advice services. This will inform the CBSD process and assist the categorisation and analysis of services. Secondly, it will identify gaps in provision in different areas of social welfare law, and at different levels of legal advice, and investigate the impacts of these gaps on services and clients.

The project will have a specific focus on Universal Credit, and on disabled people in Liverpool. Evidence will be gathered on the impact and experience in Liverpool of the current Universal Credit roll out to support recommendations for policy change in relation to Universal Credit.

Job Ref: 012890/Fpostdoc