Senior Social Analyst – Permanent Full Time

Historic England

Summary

We are the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. We champion historic places, helping people understand, value and care for them.

Historic England have a exciting new opportunity for you to become our new senior social analyst.

This is an exciting role in Historic England’s interdisciplinary Socio- Economic Analysis and Evaluation team. You will apply your in-depth knowledge of social sciences and social research methods to support the development of a robust evidence base for the historic environment. Your specialist knowledge and rigorous research skills will help to demonstrate the role the historic environment plays to our quality of life, wellbeing and community cohesion.

Working closely with colleagues in Historic England and in the wider heritage sector, you will use your research and project management skills to design, commission, manage and undertake social research and primary data collection projects. You will analyse trends of relevance to the historic environment, identifying areas where greater research and analysis is required to meet sector priorities. Although most of the focus will be on short and medium-term priorities, an element of longer-term foresight and analysis will need to be planned for. You will also focus on expanding Historic England’s understanding of available social and societal data.

Disseminating findings and generating insights is a key element of this role, so you will apply your excellent writing and communication skills to disseminate evidence and findings to a wide and varied audience. You will analyse and summarise key academic literature, policy documents and other secondary information sources for stakeholders.

You will be responsible for ensuring that social data is being analysed and properly factored into decision making. More generally you will make the case for the historic environment, through published advocacy-focussed research, including Heritage Counts, Heritage and Society and other appropriate routes.

You will help to ensure that the Treasury, Cabinet Office, DCMS and other relevant Departments have relevant summaries of heritage-related social data and evidence delivered in ways that are most likely to bring about a more positive view of heritage.

National salary range:

• £36,603 – £37,432 pro-rata

Greater London + salary range:

• £39,408 – £40,300 pro-rata

Inner London salary range:

• £40,748 – £41,671 pro-rata

What you will be doing:

• To design, manage and undertake social research to feed into Historic England’s programme of social and economic research and insight, liaising as necessary with HE staff, funders, universities and research institutes.
• To lead, advise and guide colleagues on the application of qualitative research methods to a diverse range of projects, including evaluation projects, with the aim of achieving robust outcomes.
• To take responsibility for commissioning and developing wellbeing and social impact research ensuring high quality, ethical and robust social research methods are applied.
• To lead on the development and roll out of a social impact framework to help Historic England and the wider sector capture evidence on the social outcomes of heritage-related investment and interventions.
• Support the Head of Socio-Economic Analysis and Evaluation to produce and edit content for Heritage Counts – a compendium of evidence that provides the historic environment sector with the information and data needed to make decisions and influence policy.
• Prepare well evidenced and concise briefing and insight notes for senior management on relevant policy issues.
• Think creatively about how to disseminate evidence to different audiences using your excellent writing and communication skills.
• To work with HE colleagues, partners in government, across the heritage sector and beyond to ensure the wider social and economic benefits of the historic environment are widely understood and disseminated.
• To work closely with relevant colleagues to help develop creative and fruitful partnerships with other organisations with an interest in social research and to influence relevant research into social and societal issues affecting the historic environment.
• To actively look for opportunities for new partnerships and areas of interest and where relevant formulate bids for partnership and collaborative research projects.

What we are looking for:

• An academic and/or professional qualification in a relevant subject or significant relevant experience.
• Significant experience of qualitative research, evaluation and data analysis.
• Experience of public policy research programmes with a social focus, and/or delivering these types of projects for clients.
• Excellent writing skills – producing reports or briefings tailored to specific audiences, both specialist and non-technical.
• An effective public speaker, able to represent Historic England to a range of audiences and a good verbal communicator, capable of explaining complex results and the implications of their work areas to non-specialists.

We are an inclusive employer and believe that flexible working options are for everyone. We want to make sure our working arrangements don’t prevent anyone from joining us because of their personal circumstances. We also want to provide you with the best balance in your home and work life that we can.

We are open to considering options including job sharing, part-time working, compressed hours working and different working locations, including hybrid working. Please visit our jobs pages or contact us to find out more.

Why work for Historic England

We offer a wide benefits package including a competitive pension scheme starting at 26% contributions, a generous 28 days holiday, corporate discounts, free entry into English Heritage sites across the country and development opportunities to ensure you achieve your goals.

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for everyone. Diversity helps us to perform better and attract more people to support our work. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds.

We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates and candidates with disabilities as they are underrepresented within Historic England at this level.

Historic England want all of our candidates to shine in the recruitment process. Please tell us what we can do to make sure you can show us your very best self. You can contact us by email at if you have any recruitment queries.

To ensure a fair and inclusive recruitment process for everyone the use of AI or automated tools is not permitted.