NIHR Maternity Disparities Consortium Knowledge Mobilisation Manager - College of Medicine and Health - 106434 - Grade 8

University of Birmingham · United Kingdom

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Position Details

College of Medicine and Health, Research and Knowledge Transfer   

University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £47,389 to £56,535 with potential progression once in post to £63,606

Grade: 8

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to July 2030

Closing date: 1st November 2026

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

The University of Birmingham is co-leading (along with Newcastle University) the NIHR Maternity Disparities Consortium, a £50million national programme which brings together a diverse range of organisations with expertise in research, capacity building and working with people and communities to deliver a step change in maternity outcomes and developing future research leaders in this area of need.  The research carried out by the consortium will focus on inequalities before, during and after pregnancy.

Role Summary

The Knowledge Mobilisation Manager will play a critical role in bridging the gap between research and practice, working across three research themes and cross-cutting functions led by the consortium partners and external stakeholders, in translating research evidence into action and implementation across the NHS, other care settings and into wider policy.

This position involves understanding the evidence needs of health and care professionals, policymakers and the community, in high priority areas, working with academia to drive the synthesis of evidence and/or identify high quality, relevant, actionable research evidence. 

Processes will be two-way and iterative, incorporating systems thinking to ensure decision-makers are supported to express their knowledge needs and have clear routes to implementation of evidence-based solutions, and ensuring that researchers understand the knowledge and evidence needs, of the local health and care system.

Main Duties

Build Relationships and Networks to support knowledge mobilisation:

• Champion the role of NIHR Maternity Disparities Consortium, to increase awareness of and appreciation for the support available. 
• Act as a strategic connector between knowledge producers and end-users, identifying opportunities for collaboration that enhance the uptake and impact of research and evidence.
• Foster relationships between researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers to ensure continuous dialogue and knowledge sharing.
• Actively participate in national knowledge mobilisation communities to share insights and best practice, and support research/evidence brokerage within and across other parts of the NIHR. 
• Raise awareness of the contribution of Knowledge Mobilisation to evidence-informed decision-making.
• Develop and maintain stakeholder and influence maps across all four UK nations, identifying key individuals and organisations relevant to implementation, commissioning, policy, guidance and scale-up. 
• Build sustained relationships with national and regional policy and system partners, including NHS organisations, government departments, devolved administrations, professional bodies, commissioners, local authorities and relevant VCSE organisations. 
• Identify opportunities for Consortium evidence to influence policy, guidance, commissioning, service design and clinical practice. 
• Maintain an active horizon scan of relevant policy developments, national priorities and opportunities for research influence.

Understand Local Knowledge Needs and Curate Knowledge for decision-making

• Collaborate with decision-makers, researchers, healthcare providers, policymakers, and community organisations to identify knowledge needs and facilitate the exchange of information.
• Contribute to needs assessments to understand the specific challenges and opportunities within the health and care system.
• In response to priority policy, practice and community knowledge needs, work with Consortium researchers and methodological experts within the themes, workstreams and core functions to identify, interpret and mobilise relevant evidence for local, regional and national policymakers/care providers/commissioners. 
• Ensure intelligence from policymakers, practitioners, commissioners and communities is fed back into Consortium themes, workstreams and core functions to inform research priorities, intervention refinement and implementation planning. 
• Identify emerging findings and intervention components that are sufficiently mature for wider adoption, implementation or policy engagement.
• Work with experts to synthesise and translate complex research findings into actionable, context-specific insights.
• Maintain effective communication channels with all stakeholders to ensure continuous knowledge flow and address any barriers to implementation.
• Support the wider dissemination of evidence-based approaches to enable regional and national decision making.

Support Implementation of Knowledge:

• Undertake knowledge mobilisation work to inform key decisions in the health and care system, providing the right information to the right people at the right time. Activity may include: 
  • Develop, deliver and continually refine a Consortium-wide knowledge mobilisation, policy engagement and impact strategy, working across the three research themes, and the cross-cutting workstreams and core functions. 
  • Develop clear pathways for moving emerging Consortium findings from research into implementation, adoption, commissioning, policy and national guidance. 
  • Work with research teams to identify adoption-ready interventions, findings and resources and support plans for spread, scale-up and sustainability. 
  • Support cross-site learning across the Consortium’s organisations, identifying transferable learning and contextual differences relevant to implementation across the four UK nations.
  • Develop rapid evidence and policy briefings, targeted stakeholder and public roundtables, identification of adoption-ready research and innovation, implementation resources, policy engagement and support for scale-up
  • Designing and facilitating research led training sessions, seminars, workshops, presentations, and one-on-one guidance.
  • Creating educational materials, policy briefs, and other resources to support the application of research in practice.
  • Convene and support high-level knowledge exchange activities, including national and devolved nation policy roundtables, stakeholder workshops and targeted engagement with key decision-makers.
  • Translate research findings into formats suited to different audiences, including commissioners, policymakers, clinical leaders, professional bodies, communities and the public. 
  • Representing the NIHR Maternity Disparities Consortium at relevant forums, conferences, and partner meetings to build visibility, foster collaborative opportunities, and strengthen knowledge mobilisation networks.
  • Rely on, and use, a range of knowledge mobilisation frameworks and approaches, to develop and implement strategies to translate complex research findings into practical, user-friendly formats.
  • Collaborate with decision-makers to tailor and adapt knowledge for local contexts.

Other

• Develop and implement a Consortium-wide approach to monitoring and evaluating knowledge mobilisation and research impact, including evidence of influence on policy, guidance, commissioning, service redesign, clinical practice, implementation and community outcomes.
• Actively manage equality, diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour. 
• Supports the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working. 
• Develop and maintain an impact portfolio, including case studies demonstrating how Consortium research has influenced decisions, implementation and practice. 
• Support reporting of knowledge mobilisation, implementation and impact to NIHR and Consortium governance groups.
• Any other duties commensurate with the grade.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Educated to Master’s (or PhD degree) in a related field. 
• Relevant experience in knowledge mobilisation, knowledge translation, or a related role within the health sector.
• Experience of organising and facilitating meetings and events with groups of stakeholders to influence policy, service delivery, commissioning or implementation within complex health or care systems.
• Experience of working effectively with senior stakeholders across government, NHS organisations, professional bodies, academia and community or voluntary sector organisations
• Strong understanding of health and care systems, including the evidence-to-practice gap.
• An appreciation of knowledge mobilisation theories and how they can be operationalised. 
• An excellent understanding of knowledge mobilisation approaches e.g. networking, product development, engagement activities, dissemination to professionals and the public, commercialisation, co-production and evaluation. 
• Knowledge of the relevant networks of the organisations/systems working within and awareness of key influencers. 
• Building and maintaining strong relationships with diverse stakeholders. 
• Negotiation, persuasion, managing conflict, reconciling agendas, finding common ground.
• Supporting the theme/workstreams research programmes of the Consortium in cooperation and consultation with community members and partners. 
• Strong understanding of research methodologies and evidence-based practices.
• Excellent communication skills, in both plain language and academic style.
• Interpreting and identifying key results from research evidence and succinctly summarise findings in plain language.
• Developing creative knowledge products such as infographics, newsletters, factsheets, lay summaries, presentations and/or video stories. 
• Proficiency in creating educational and training materials.
• Familiarity with digital tools and platforms for knowledge dissemination.
• Designing, organising, facilitating and evaluating knowledge sharing events such as stakeholder meetings, webinars, community forums and other engagement activities.
• Presentation, teaching, group facilitation.
• Evaluation of knowledge mobilisation processes and outcomes
• Experience of supporting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within own organisation and with partners. 

Further particulars can be found here

Informal enquiries to Rebecca Ward, email: r.j.ward.2@bham.ac.uk 

View our staff values and behaviours here

Use of AI in applications: We want to understand your genuine interest in the role and for the written elements of your application to accurately reflect your own communication style. Applications that rely too heavily on AI tools can appear generic and lack the detail we need to assess your skills and experience. Such applications will unlikely be progressed to interview.

We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website.

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