Research Assistant

Department: Electronic Engineering
Vacancy ID: 043783
Closing Date: 10-Sep-2026

Maynooth University is committed to a strategy in which the primary University goals of excellent research and scholarship and outstanding education are interlinked and equally valued.

The research project Screening Mobility is now seeking to appoint a Research Assistant. The Research Assistant will support the project team with the logistics and administration associated with organising the networks’ online and in person meetings. 

Screening Mobility studies migration and mobility in Ireland and the UK’s Cultural and Creative industries (CCIs). Screen Industries are a priority sector in the UK’s Creative Industries Sector Plan and have central status in Ireland's Digital Creative Industries Roadmap. They make a major contribution to the economic output of CCIs. Like many other CCIs, Screen Industries face challenges of sustaining career trajectories; precarious working conditions; gender, racial, and other demographic inequalities; skills shortages; and increased technological and global competition. 

Screen Industries particular reliance on migration and mobility (through organisations’ and individuals’ short-, long-term, or permanent movement to facilitate production) creates both opportunities and concerns for responding to these challenges. These opportunities and concerns raise complex questions around industry and livelihood sustainability as well as access, belonging, and cultural differences across local, national, and international scales. However, migration and mobility remain under-researched when considering the economic, social and cultural importance of Screen Industries and CCIs more broadly. 

The objective of Screening Mobility is to create a new network of policy, industry and academic experts on migration and mobility in the UK and Ireland's Screen Industries to address these opportunities and challenges. It will consider new perspectives and solutions regarding the structural forces that shape opportunity, constraint, and precarity in both Screen Industries and the wider CCIs.

Working under agreed, shared principles, it will bring together a ‘triple helix’ of academics, industry and policymakers. This collaboration will develop knowledge on the extent of mobility in Screen Industries, as well as the experiences and facilitators of, and barriers to, mobility and migration. Sharing policy, industry and research expertise will augment the development of evidence, which would not be possible were the range of stakeholders involved to remain working in their geographical, organisational and disciplinary silos.

The objective will be achieved through a variety of activities focused on co-producing answers to 4 research questions: 

1. What data and what sources are needed to best understand migration and mobility in the UK and Ireland’s Screen Industries? 
2. What are the experiences of migration and mobility in the UK and Ireland’s Screen Industries? 
3. What are the regulatory regimes of migration and mobility in Screen Industries in the UK and Ireland? 
4. What are the economic, social and cultural impacts of migration and mobility in the UK and Ireland’s Screen Industries? 

Screening Mobility will co-produce answers to these research questions by fusing research excellence from across the team through several different kinds of activities. Online and in-person workshops, talks, events and creative outputs will connect qualitative and quantitative analysis with creative and participatory research practice. The activities will share data and methods, and will create new shared languages for academic, policy and industry voices. 

Salary Scale:

Research Assistant (Level 1): €34,130 – €37,173 pro rata (0.3FTE) p.a. (5 points)

Appointments will be made in accordance with public sector pay provisions.

Closing Date:

23:30hrs (local Irish time) on Sunday, 18th October 2026

Applications must be submitted by the closing date and time specified above. Any applications which are still in progress at the closing time on the specified closing date will be cancelled automatically by the system.

Late applications will not be accepted.

Maynooth University is an equal opportunities employer

The position is subject to the Statutes of the University