About Us

The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London is one of the oldest law schools in England and recognised globally as one of the best law schools in the world. The School was established in 1831 and has played an integral role in the life of King's since the university was formed almost 200 years ago.

The School is based in the East Wing of Somerset House on King's Strand Campus in London. Our location means that we are in the heart of legal London with the Houses of Parliament, government departments, the Royal Courts of Justice, the Inns of Court and the offices of global law firms all within walking distance.

About the Role

We are recruiting a Post Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) to work within the Centre for Data Futures (CDF) at King’s College London, in close collaboration with Prof Yulan He (KCL computer science) and her NLP group.

The post is central to the NAVIGATE research programme, which investigates how different modes of AI uncertainty expression affect the quality of human reasoning – specifically the capacity for genuine engagement with views that differ from one’s own (what the programme terms “doxastic plasticity”). The programme develops and deploys LLM-based systems in morally loaded professional contexts, including healthcare, law and education, and asks: what scaffolding strategies preserve the kind of deliberative openness required for collective norm-refinement?

The PDRA will lead the design, implementation, and evaluation of the programme's computational experiments. This includes developing experimental interfaces built around large language models, designing prompting and fine-tuning strategies to vary how models express uncertainty, and building evaluation pipelines to measure the downstream effects on human reasoning. The PDRA will collaborate with Prof. Yulan He (KCL Institute for AI, NLP) on the technical pipeline.

The post is offered as a full-time 20-month contract (with possibility of extension, depending on further research funding), with a start date from the 01st January 2027.

You should hold a PhD in Computer Science, with expertise in Natural Language Processing, and have a demonstrated track record of research at the intersection of NLP and human-centred or social applications. Experience with LLM fine-tuning, uncertainty quantification, or evaluation of language model outputs is particularly desirable.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential Criteria

• PhD in Computer Science (or thesis submitted with viva pending) or equivalent experience.
• Specialist knowledge in NLP or a closely related area of machine learning, with proven experience working with large language models: including fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and evaluation of LLM outputs.
• Experience or demonstrated interest in uncertainty quantification or the evaluation of uncertainty expression in language model outputs.
• Proven research experience, as evidenced by publications in peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.
• Demonstrated interest in, and ability to engage with, social science and humanities literature relevant to AI system design (e.g., ethics of AI, human-computer interaction, deliberative quality).
• A clear interest in developing publications on NLP and the social implications of LLM uncertainty expression.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of human participant experimental design or evaluation studies.
• Familiarity with participatory methods or co-design approaches in the context of AI systems.
• Experience in developing and/or releasing open-access datasets.
• Experience in presenting research to non-specialist (e.g., policy or practitioner) audiences.

Full details of the role and the skills and experience required, can be found in the attached job description which provided on the next page.

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and we recognise its growing role in professional work. Applicants may use AI tools to support preparation of their application, for example to research the role or structure written responses. However, applications must reflect the applicant’s own work and experience. AI tools should not be used during interviews or assessment activities unless this has been agreed in advance as a reasonable adjustment. Further guidance on the use of AI in recruitment can be found here.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

In your application, please refer to Professorpositions.com