Job Description

The Role
A 24-month fixed term full time Research Assistant (RA) position is available in the Department of Geography at Durham University. The successful candidate will join the project 'V2C: Viking To Christian Landscapes Across The Norweigain Sea: Agricultural Trajectories And Resilience Usng SedaDNA and Fecal Lipids'. The project is led at Durham by Dr Helen Mackay and is funded by the Research Council of Norway.
As a RA on this project, the successful applicant will be required to develop reconstructions of human and animal activity from lakes and wetlands close to Viking-Medieval archaeological sites in northern Norway and Scotland using faecal steroid lipid biomarkers. Faecal steroid reconstrutions for the last 1500 years will be compared to other proxies of environmental change (such as sedaDNA, pollen and pXRF) and archaeological evidence developed by collaborators at the The Arctic University of Norway, University of Bergen and Universities of the Highlands and Islands. The wider project will provide a new comprenshive understanding of the balance of cultural and environmental factors in landscape history from the Viking to Christian periods in northern Norway and the Northern Isles, UK. The main responsibilities of the RA will be to develop faecal steroid datasets from lake sediments by processing sediment samples for gas chromatography analysis in a contai nment level 2 (CL2) laboratory, following established laboratory protocols, assisting with quality control, troubleshooting, and running of GC-FID and GC-MS. A further responsibility will be to prepare data, figures and text for publication and to communicate the interim and final findings of the research at collaborator workshops and other scientific meetings.
This is a great opportunity to work as part of a friendly team on a cutting-edge project. The RA will have access to outstanding resources including laboratory facilities.
The successful candidate will have demonstrated experience in creating geochemical data and in compiling and presenting geochemical data sets. Previous experience of working with sedimentary archives to reconstruct environmental change and/or organic geochemical analysis would be an advantage.
This post is fixed term for 24 months. The funding is available from 01/11/2025 and the project is time-limited and will end on 31/12/2027. Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post by 1st November 2025, but must start no later than 5th January 2026.
The post-holder is employed to work on research/a research project which will be led by another colleague. Whilst this means that the post-holder will not be carrying out independent research in his/her own right, the expectation is that they will contribute to the advancement of the project, through the development of their own research ideas/adaptation and development of research protocols.
Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post by 1st November 2025