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About the Role

This role is an exciting opportunity to join the operational team of a diverse, global network that serves more than 220 doctoral and postdoctoral researchers working on open education and related topics as well as a wider community of practice. The Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN) (https://go-gn.net) was founded in 2012 and has been managed by the award-winning team at The Open University (UK) in the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) since 2015.

GO-GN plays a critical role in the open education community, providing extra-institutional, informal support to doctoral researchers in more than 30 different countries around the world. We support open education researchers by raising the profile of research in this area, facilitating activities across the network, developing openness as a process of research and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in open education research and practice. We achieve our aims through various activities including face-to-face workshops aligned with major open education conferences, scholarships, online events and collaborative activities including the co-creation of openly licensed outputs and collaboration with other stakeholders in the open education space. GO-GN is a high impact network with ca. 80,000 citations of doctoral researcher and alumni member research as of October 2026.

The GO-GN coordination team currently comprises of three academics with support from professional services. The team utilise open and agile approaches in a fast-paced and member led environment. The Research Associate will play a key role in the GO-GN team, at an exciting time in the network’s development. Our current focus is sustainability pathways for the network, which include building on our exploration of federation through pilot hubs, evidencing the network’s impact and a communications refresh. Other activities for this phase include collaborative research projects, further openly licensed guides and an enhanced funding scheme for members.

Key Responsibilities

• Attend weekly GO-GN meetings (face-to-face/online).
• Craft appropriate social media and newsletter content for the GO-GN audience.
• Co-organise and host GO-GN webinars with external speakers.
• Co-produce reports and high-quality, open licensed publications in collaboration with project leads and the wider GO-GN community.
• Contribute to organising, running and documenting GO-GN workshops.
• Participation and presentation at external events such as conferences, as required.
• Contribute to GO-GN sustainability planning, as required.
• Strong time management and project-planning skills.
• Observe the principles of equality, diversity, and inclusion.
• To undertake other duties as may be reasonably requested and that are commensurate with the nature and grade of the post.

About You

Essential Criteria

• PhD in Educational Technology, Technology-Enhanced Learning, or another relevant field.
• Knowledge of open educational resources, open research practices or similar.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Experience of Participating in research of international quality.
• Experience in research design.
• Ability to collect and analyse qualitative and quantitive data including interviews, focus groups, observations, online surveys and statistical analysis.
• Experience of working with social media platforms, building online communities and crafting content for academic audiences.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team, ideally in interdisciplinary teams.
• Experience of authoring, co-authoring or editing academic outputs including  journal articles, books, research report.
• Ability to visit IET at least once a month for a face-to-face meeting with the team.

Desirable

• Evidence of conducting both independent and collaborative research.
• Video editing skills.
• Willingness to engage in long-distance travel.

Support with your application

If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.

What's in it for you?

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).

Flexible working

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

Work Location

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes Office, it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be on day per month as a minimum, but this may be more often as required. Full-time working based from our Milton Keynes site is also supported if this is preferred by the candidate.  Expenses associated with travel to our Milton Keynes site are not reimbursable.

Next steps in the Recruitment process

We anticipate interviews taking place week commencing 21st December 2026.

Early closing date notification

While most roles will remain open until the advertised closing date, applications may be reviewed on an ongoing basis. In some cases, vacancies may close earlier if a sufficient number of suitable applications have been received and equality impacts have been appropriately considered. All roles will remain advertised for a minimum of one week before any early closure is implemented.

If you have started an application or were in the process of applying when the advert closed, we encourage you to get in touch. We are committed to understanding individual circumstances and can offer further support where needed, including reasonable adjustments for applicants with protected characteristics.

How to apply

To apply for this role, please submit the following documents:

• CV
• Supporting statement, up to 1,000 words, you should set out in your statement why you’re interested in this role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required essential criteria and competencies for this role as detailed in the above person specification.  

You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system.  Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.