Research Fellow in Sustainable Finance London, England
Job description
About us
IIPP is a department within UCL and part of The Bartlett faculty, known internationally for its radical thinking about space, design, and sustainability. The work of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) is influencing global policy decisions and creating new policy collaborations to deliver public value-driven innovations. IIPP is founded and directed by Mariana Mazzucato, who holds the Chair in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value. Our team brings together an interdisciplinary group of cutting edge academics and practitioners with global experience. The mission of IIPP is to change how public value is imagined, practiced and evaluated to tackle societal challenges—and, by doing this, deliver economic growth that is innovation-led, sustainable and inclusive. IIPP rethinks the state. We challenge people to imagine a new role for the public sector as an ambitious and entrepreneurial partner with the private sector. Public organisations should not only fix markets, but actively co-create and shape markets. Markets can be shaped by purposeful policy. Markets can be designed to deliver public value. We help global policy makers discover better solutions to complex problems — in areas like industrial strategy, innovation policy, economic development, and institutional design. Research strategy Through our research, IIPP aims to help create new economic thinking and practical tools for the public sector to co-create and co-shape markets through public purpose-led missions. With this mission at its core, IIPP's research tackles the complex relationships between economic, technological, and social changes, covering four pillars of inquiry: 1. Rethinking value: challenging existing theories of value, to create a new framework to understand how value can be created and shared. 2. Shaping innovation: considering how to steer scientific and technological advances to tackle societal challenges 3. Transforming institutions: examining how we can create public purpose-driven institutions. 4. Directing finance: developing patient, strategic finance mechanisms for sustainable, investment-led growth. We use these pillars to find solutions in areas such as health innovation, green economy, space economy, digital transformation, data, and artificial intelligence. Cutting across these pillars are the key IIPP themes of: • Co-shaping and co-creating • Missions and public purpose • Capabilities and governance • New economic thinking Our team brings together an interdisciplinary group of cutting-edge academics and practitioners with global experience.
About the role
IIPP is seeking a Research Fellow to fill an active, practice-based position working with public and private-sector actors to build dynamic capabilities to approach grand societal changes. The postholder will work closely with the Senior Research Fellow and other team members on a set of related projects focused on cities, climate and innovation, including but not limited to. This project is part of a collaboration between IIPP and the Global Systems Institute (GSI) at the University of Exeter, leading scientific experts on Tipping Points. The RF will work closely with the Principle Investigator on the project, Dr Josh Ryan-Collins and Dr. Jesse Abrahams and Professor Tim Lenton at the GSI. The project aims to build the case for central banks and financial supervisors to use their policy tools to reduce financial flows that contribute to key ecological tipping points. Two main outputs are envisaged. 1. The first output will draw from relevant scientific literature and economic theory to explore how financial supervisors’ regulatory frameworks should conceptualise and account for critical ecological thresholds as sources of financial and macroeconomic risk. This research will identify globally systemically important tipping points (GSITP) that financial policymakers should focus on. These might include, for example, specific biomes such as the Amazon rainforest and the Boreal forests whose resilience as socio-ecological systems is integral to achieving both climate and nature restoration goals and preventing catastrophic macroeconomic shocks. 2. The second output will aim to quantify how financial flows are interacting with the identified globally systemically important tipping points (GSITPs). This analysis will first identify the (1) geographical scope, (2) key economic sectors, (3) relevant corporate actors, (4) sources of finance – associated with the chosen tipping points. The next stage is to quantify financial flows linked to key corporate actors and analysing the size and type of exposures, types of financial actors implicated, and estimates of interconnectedness.
About you
The ideal candidate will have an academic background to at least Masters level in a related field (e.g. Economics, Finance, political economy) and/or have relevant work experience (e.g. working on sustainable finance analysis in the private, public or third sector). The researcher should have a strong background and interest in sustainable finance and will demonstrate a strong research profile, and have effective communication skills (both oral and written), team-working skills, self-direction and the capacity for doing independent work.
What we offer
As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents we also offer some great benefits some of which are below: 41 Days holiday (including 27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days) Hybrid Final Salary Pension Scheme Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan On-Site nursery On-site gym Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service Discounted medical insurance
Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women. You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/
