Prospective Students & Open Roles
Information for prospective PhD students, postdocs, and collaborators interested in joining the lab.
Current Openings
Postdoc in Adolescent Digital Wellbeing
About the role
The Kaleidoscope project is a year-long longitudinal study of approximately 300 adolescents and families, collecting multi-platform behavioural trace data across gaming platforms alongside ecological momentary assessment, qualitative measures, and randomised controlled trials of family-facing wellbeing interventions. Working in close collaboration with the PI, you will take joint ownership of the project's technical infrastructure and quantitative analyses, while also playing an active role in participant recruitment, onboarding, and retention. The project is designed for genuine intellectual partnership, with substantial scope to specialise and pursue independent research directions within the scope of digital wellbeing.
What you would be doing
You will take ownership of the quantitative and technical infrastructure of the Kaleidoscope project, working in close collaboration with the PI and a Research Assistant who leads participant recruitment and day-to-day engagement. Based on your expertise and interests, you will lead elements of the data collection pipeline and analytical strategy - together building a rigorous, end-to-end research programme. This includes contributing to and maintaining data collection systems (REST APIs, SQL databases, mobile-based ESM tools), ensuring data pipelines are robust, well-documented, and version-controlled, and leading advanced quantitative analyses of intensive longitudinal and behavioural trace data using causal inference and multilevel modelling approaches.
You will contribute to the design and analysis of randomised controlled trials testing family-facing interventions emerging from the study's qualitative findings, and co-author reproducible open science manuscripts including writing and maintaining analysis code in R or Python.
Research Assistant in Adolescent Digital Wellbeing
About the role
How does video gaming affect adolescents, and how can families foster healthy gaming habits? In this role, you will contribute to the cutting-edge Kaleidoscope research project aimed at answering precisely that question. The project offers a fantastic opportunity to develop social science research skills, take ownership on parts of the project in the context of a small team, and directly engage with the beneficiaries of the research.
What you would be doing
The Kaleidoscope project is a year-long longitudinal study of approximately 300 adolescents and families, collecting deep behavioural trace data across gaming platforms alongside ecological momentary assessment, qualitative measures, and randomised controlled trials of family-facing wellbeing interventions. Working in close collaboration with the PI and a postdoctoral researcher, you will play a key role in participant recruitment, onboarding, and retention – helping participants link their gaming accounts, proactively developing relationships with schools, and handling participant inquiries. You will also lead aspects of the qualitative data collection and analysis. This scope of the project means there is potential to pursue independent research directions, and to prepare results for publication as either lead or co-author.
How to Contact Me
Positions in the lab are typically only available when specifically advertised and funded — any open roles will be advertised above.
Note that as a Research Fellow at an early stage of my independent career, I am not currently able to act as a primary PhD supervisor; any prospective PhD students need to be primarily supervised by a more senior colleague at Imperial and should reach out to them instead.
With that said, speculative enquiries are welcome, particularly from postdocs and research assistants whose interests align closely with the lab’s work.
When you email, please:
- Use the subject line: [Prospective: Role Type] (e.g., [Prospective: Postdoc])
- Include a short paragraph on why you are interested in this specific lab’s work — not just digital wellbeing research generally
- Attach your CV
- Share any relevant work: preprints, code, thesis chapters, or a portfolio
Generic enquiries that do not engage with the lab’s research are unlikely to receive a response. I aim to reply to genuine enquiries within two weeks.
Lab Values
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Methods: The majority of work combines passive behavioural data from gaming and social media platforms with experience sampling - in these projects, comfort with quantitative methods is important; prior expertise in digital wellbeing specifically is not.
- We also apply other methods, including qualitative and participatory research, and are open to other types of media within the broad remit of digital wellbeing.
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Open research: Where relevant, we preregister hypotheses, share code and data (while respective ethics and privacy) alongside every paper, and require that quantitative analyses be reproduced by at least one other lab member before submission.
- Formal theory development and the advancement of causal models are a particular focus of our open research efforts.
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Industry independence: Nick engages in active dialogue and occasional collaboration with industry (particularly the games industry), but does not accept funds from industry in any form. Applied impact matters, but not at the cost of independence.
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Openness to criticism: We give and receive honest, good-natured criticism as a normal part of the research process - of each other’s work and of the field’s assumptions.
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Work–life balance: Lab members are not expected to work evenings or weekends. This is modelled, not just stated.
Get in Touch
Ready to reach out? Use the subject line format described above and include your CV.
Email the Lab