LSE's Research and Policy Staff Association includes all salaried research and policy staff, from junior researchers to Professorial Research Fellows and Distinguished Policy Fellows - more than 300 members in all. The association is currently chaired by Catarina Heeckt. It was founded in 2012 by Kath Scanlon and James Ker-Lindsay. They felt an association would be particularly beneficial because research staff at LSE often work in very small groups, or alone - unlike, say, researchers in laboratory disciplines.
Almost all research staff are funded by external contracts rather than central School funds, so funding and job security are key issues. The RPSA worked closely with the School's UCU branch to negotiate two new career tracks for researchers: the New Research Staff Career (introduced in 2015) and the Policy Track (introduced in 2018).
The main aims of the association are to provide a forum for research and policy staff and to represent their interests within the School. Normally the association holds a termly lunch meeting, to which all research staff are invited, where they network and discuss issues facing researchers at LSE.
For further information regarding the Research and Policy Staff Association, please contact Catarina Heeckt: c.l.heeckt@lse.ac.uk