ABOUT ARU:

ARU is a global university transforming lives through innovative, inclusive and entrepreneurial education and research. ARU holds a Gold award for the quality of its education, awarded through the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).
ARU’s research institutes and four faculties bridge scientific, technical and creative fields. We deliver impactful research which tackles pressing issues and makes a real difference to our communities. Our academic excellence has been recognised by the UK’s Higher Education funding bodies, with 16 of our research areas assessed as world leading. We are the largest provider of Nursing, Midwifery, Health and Social Care students in the East of England, and we are also among the UK’s leading universities for degree apprenticeship provision, working with hundreds of employers across the UK.

ABOUT YOU:

PhD qualified, you’ll have experience and knowledge of applied mixed methods research methods and design, writing comprehensive reports/papers and supporting stakeholder engagement activities. You will be able to communicate effectively, have excellent presentation skills, and have strong administrative/organisational abilities. The ability to prioritise multiple tasks to meet agreed deadlines and work as part of a diverse team is essential. We are looking for someone who can think critically, work with a range of professional and public groups, and wants to see research making a difference, particularly for marginalised communities and groups.
Informal enquiries can be made to Gillian Janes, Professor of Nursing and Quality Improvement, at gillian.janes@aru.ac.uk OR Calvin Moorley, Professor of Diversity and Social Justice, at moorleyc@lsbu.ac.uk
Interviews week commencing 7th or 24th April
Find out more about working with us and how we recruit.
We have an agile working culture and offer an extensive range of benefits including generous holiday entitlement, occupational pension schemes, training and development opportunities, travel to work scheme and a competitive relocation package. Visit our benefits page for full details.

GUIDANCE NOTES:

Please download the Job Description Person Specification for key requirements. To apply, demonstrate how your skills and experience meet the criteria.
Job Category

Teaching, Research & Scholarship
Vacancy Type

Fixed term contract
Fixed Term Duration

18 months
Employment Type

Part time
Salary From

£38,249 p.a. pro rata
Salary To

£44,128 p.a. pro rata
Location

Chelmsford
Faculty/Prof Service

Faculty of Health, Medicine & Social Care
Ref No
3384
Closing Date
31/03/2025

You to take a lead role in the coordination and delivery of this NIHR Research for Patient Benefit-funded community stroke rehabilitation research project; led jointly by ARU and LSBU and hosted by East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust. The study involves innovative integration and application of service improvement and silences methodologies to enhance community rehabilitation and improve outcomes for stroke survivors living at home in rural and coastal Essex and urban, central London.
Stroke a very common. It affects 113,000 people every year, leading to long-term disability and complex health needs at considerable cost. Guidelines require that stroke survivors’ rehabilitation goals are reviewed regularly for a year, then annually, but these are often missed so stroke survivors engage in activities at home like folding laundry, doing jigsaws, or playing games to support recovery without professional help. Such activities may represent enriched environment activities (EEAs) because they help improve physical, cognitive, and social recovery, potentially improving rehabilitation outcomes and reducing future stroke risk; however, our knowledge of them is limited to hospitals.
Your role will be to support the project, working with the research team and using a range of applied arts and humanities methods to support multiple stakeholder engagement activities, data gathering and analysis, and the development and recording of impact. You will work closely with the joint study leads Professor Gillian Janes (ARU) and Professor Calvin Moorley (LSBU) and key stakeholders. You will be working primarily with the core research team and joint study leads in Essex and Central London.
You will be involved in various research activities, including documentary analysis of current discharge guidelines, semi-structured interviewing, data analysis and working with stakeholders in Essex and central London sites, to co-design practical resources for home use and to influence future stroke rehabilitation policy and practice. This will involve working with stroke survivors living at home in rural and coastal Essex and urban, central London to investigate the activities they use to support recovery and how these might be optimised and spread to support personal agency and enhance outcomes. You will also contribute to writing reports, and developing and disseminating study outputs and support the development and monitoring of the profile of the study and its impact.
The aims of the project are to work with stroke survivors living at home and other stakeholders to:
1. Determine opportunities for enhanced stroke rehabilitation provision by identifying the self-initiated enriched environment activities (EEAs) used by stroke survivors at home and subsequently explore the potential of these.
2. Develop and share accessible EEA-based, low-cost strategies for supporting rehabilitation, independent living, and reducing recurrent stroke risk, to support self-agency and inform future scalability.
Objectives – To work with stroke survivors living at home and at least 3 months post-stroke to:
a) Identify activities they use informally to support rehabilitation and functional recovery and explore to what extent they could be identified as EEAs.
b) Evaluate the perceived utility of these activities for enabling living well and independently at home.
c) Determine how the identified EEAs could be improved and used to enhance rehabilitation outcomes more widely to facilitate independent living, by enhancing current discharge information.