Funded by the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy, King’s College London, and together with Dr. Alessio Patalano, I am starting a new research project that examines how democracies evaluate long-term futures strategic trends, threats, and opportunities.
Using close-reading and textual analysis techniques, the project investigates how two democracies – the UK and Japan – have formulated futures strategic assessments over the past two decades, and what impact these assessments have had on national strategy, policy, and defence capabilities.
The British government’s official effort in this respect is the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Development, Concepts, and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) ‘Strategic Trends Programme’. The Japanese government’s official effort is the Ministry of Defense (MoD) National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) “Council of Defense-Strategic Studies”.
We are looking for two Research Assistants – come work with us!
Number of positions: 2
Location: UK-based
Hours per Week: Flexible
Job Type: Temporary
Pay Rate: £ 22.85 per hour
Closing date: 01/01/2021
Start date: 18/01/2021
End date: 31/05/2021
Sector: Research
Job Description
The Centre for Grand Strategy/Japan Programme, in the Department of War Studies of King’s College London, is looking to hire 2 UK-based Research Assistants for the research project “The Future Starts Today”.
Funded by the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy, King’s College London, The Future Starts Today aims to improve the process by which security organisations in democracies estimate long-term strategic trends, security threats, and opportunities. Using close-reading and textual analysis techniques, the project investigates how two democracies – the UK and Japan – have formulated futures strategic assessments over the past two decades, and what impact these assessments have had on national strategy, policy, and defence capabilities.
The positions advertised are for 6 months (January-June 2020) with expected commitment of a minimum of 1 day per week (40 hours total).
How to Apply
Interested candidates should send a CV and a one-page cover letter to eitan.oren@kcl.ac.uk. The deadline for application is 5:00pm Friday 1 January 2021 with interviews the following week. The start date is Monday 18 January 2021.
Essential Skills
• Native level of English (1 post)
• Native level of Japanese and advanced or native level of English (2nd post)
• An ability to work on a tight schedule and with a range of people, including academic staff
• Good data collection, organisastion and processing skills
• An ability to work independently
• Experience working with spreadsheets (such as MS Excel)
•Experience working with corpus analysis / text analysis software (
Desirable Skills
• An interest in international security, grand strategy and/or threat perception
Duties & Responsibilities
The key objectives and responsibilities of the post are as follows:
• Identify, archive, and evaluate strategic assessment documents in the UK and in Japan
• Apply close reading and textual analysis techniques to the documents
• Project outreach and advertising
• Attend regular meetings with the project investigators and other project partners
• Contribute to project outputs
Qualifications
Undergraduate degree
1 position requires native Japanese language skills (in addition to English).
Health & Safety Considerations
N/A
Eitan Oren 