Student Casual – Research Assistant Business School – Grade 6

Job Title: Research Assistant (Employability, Skills and Professional Identity)

College/Division: College of Social Sciences

School/Department: Birmingham Business School, Department of Accounting

Full time/Part time: Part time

Duration of the Post: 01/04/2026 – 31/05/2026

Grade: 6

Hourly rate: £16.92 per hour plus holiday entitlement

Number of positions available: 1

Closing Date: 06/03/2026 at 23:55

Note: Please note that this vacancy may be taken down early depending on the number of applications received. We advise you to submit your application promptly.

At the University of Birmingham, Worklink is the dedicated student employment service that helps students find flexible, well-paid part-time roles that fit around your studies. Each year the University invests more than £2.5 million to employ 3,000 of our own students in a wide range of roles, supporting our student community into part-time work. Roles available via Worklink include administrative roles, support staff such as cleaners or baristas, research roles and many more.

Jobs through Worklink help you to gain work experience, develop skills relevant for your future career, and improve your soft and hard skills in a professional setting. Enhance your CV and get valuable experience ready for graduate roles and feel connected to your university and local community.

Our jobs are flexible and can be scheduled around your academic commitments, so you can focus on your studies first. Our team are passionate about supporting students into work. Worklink is based in a central location on campus which is easily accessible for students and can also be contacted online.

Find out more about working through Worklink here or via the student intranet.

We are seeking a motivated PhD student to work as a Research Assistant on a pedagogic research project entitled: "Becoming an Accountant:
How Degree Programmes Support Professional Identity Formation through Skills Recognition and Reflection." The project explores how higher education programmes help students recognise, articulate, and reflect on the professional skills they develop, and how this supports employability, professional identity formation, and lifelong learning.

While the project is situated within accounting education, candidates do not need to be from Accounting or Finance. This role may particularly suit PhD students from Education, Business & Management, Social Sciences, or related disciplines, especially those with an interest in:

• Employability and graduate skills
• Reflective learning and professional identity
• Curriculum and programme design
• Lifelong learning and professional development

• Paid research experience linked to funded pedagogic scholarship
• Insight into employability-focused curriculum research
• Opportunities to develop transferable research skills relevant to academic, educational development, or policy careers
• Experience working on a time-bound, clearly scoped research project

The Research Assistant will support the preparation of a targeted desktop literature review, including:

• Systematic literature searching across education and professional learning research
• Screening and organising academic sources
• Structured data extraction using a predefined framework
• Supporting synthesis of findings to identify key themes and pedagogic approaches

All work will be desk-based and can be carried out flexibly around doctoral study commitments.

Essential:

• Currently registered as a PhD student at the time of appointment
• Strong academic reading and synthesis skills
• Well organised, detail-oriented, and able to work independently

Desirable:

• Experience of literature reviews or qualitative research
• Interest in employability, skills development, or reflective learning
• Familiarity with education or pedagogic research (broadly defined)

• A short CV
• A brief statement (no more than one page) outlining your interest in the role and relevant experience

Interviews will take place during the week commencing 23 March 2026.

For any informal queries, please contact Stephanie Tiller ().

The University of Birmingham…