Funding opportunity from UK Parliament: Thematic Research Leads
Categories: Funding opportunities, ADR UK Partnership, Children, young people & education, Crime & justice, Employment & the economy
29 May 2026
Applications are open to become a Parliamentary Thematic Research Lead for 2027 to 2029. The UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) is collaborating with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to place a cohort of Thematic Research Leads focused on a range of topics, including some relevant to ADR UK data and research.
Thematic Research Leads are researchers embedded three days a week in Parliament, whilst retaining their substantive academic post for the remaining time. They are based in policy-relevant teams in Parliament and operate in a network facilitated by POST’s Knowledge Exchange Unit.
Post is looking to appoint Thematic Research Leads in the following areas:
- AI, Digital and Technology
- National Security and Resilience
- Infrastructure, Planning and Land Use, including Clean Energy Industries
- Health and Life Sciences
- Education, Children and Young People
- Criminal Justice
- Place-Based Economic Growth.
The purpose of the Thematic Research Lead is to facilitate and enhance the use of research evidence and expertise in Parliament (in both the House of Commons and House of Lords) through effective knowledge exchange, collaboration and processes.
Each TRL leads on a specific policy area. To achieve this, TRLs conduct three primary activities:
- strategic support for the production and delivery of research evidence for Parliament, within a broad policy area
- support to develop a research and innovation landscape that facilitates and encourages knowledge exchange between Parliament and the research community
- participation in a network of Thematic Research Leads to share intelligence and insights across policy areas.
How ADR UK data can support these roles
Researchers use ADR UK data to generate new insights to inform better policy. If you are a researcher already working with our data, your expertise could be a good fit to improve the use of research evidence in Parliament through these roles.
In particular, ADR UK's flagship datasets offer the opportunity to generate rich evidence on the following TRL themes:
Education, Children and Young People
Educational outcomes for children and young people are a key theme of several ADR UK datasets. The ECHILD dataset can be used to explore the effects of education on children's health, and the effects of health on children's education in England.
Meanwhile, datasets covering children's longitudinal education outcomes are available for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Datasets that can be used to study the experiences of looked after children are also available for Scotland and Wales.
- See all ADR UK flagship datasets on this theme
- Find out more about this Thematic Research Lead opportunity.
Criminal Justice
The suite of ADR UK flagship datasets made available through the Ministry of Justice Data First programme can be used to generate a wealth of policy-relevant evidence on criminal justice. These include the Cross-Justice System; Family Court linked to Cafcass and Census; and Ministry of Justice & Department for Education linked datasets.
- See all ADR UK flagship datasets on this theme
- Find out more about this Thematic Research Lead opportunity
Place-Based Economic Growth
There are a range of ADR UK flagship datasets that can be used to answer pressing questions about the economy. These include RAPID: Population interactions with employment, benefits and pensions - UK, which links administrative data from the Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty's Revenue & Customs.
The Wage and Employment Dynamics project has made a number of datasets available which link the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings to a range of other datasets, including the 2011 Census for England and Wales, PAYE & Self-Assessment data, and the Migrant Workers Scan.
For Northern Ireland specifically, Business Data for Research and the Cross-Government Income Administrative Dataset contain rich data to generate economic evidence.
- See all ADR UK flagship datasets on this theme
- Find out more about this Thematic Research Lead opportunity.
How to apply
To hear more about the Thematic Research Leads funding opportunities, register for the information session taking place on Thursday 18 June, 13:00 - 14:30. Applications close on Sunday 9 August 2026.
For the full information and how to apply:
