Role overview
The Animal Welfare League is commissioning its first substantial body of independent research: three studies across South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt on the economics of cage-free egg production, the spread of cage systems in broiler production, and the real cost of building aviary laying hen housing in African conditions.
We're looking for someone to lead this program. This is a commissioning and quality role, not one that involves writing the research itself. You will define what gets studied, select who studies it, hold them to a rigorous standard, and ensure the results meet the expectations of the institutions, regulators, and companies whose decisions they're meant to inform.
The program is deliberately open: every study we commission is published in full, whatever the outcome, under an open license, with its underlying data. You would be responsible for protecting that openness under pressure.
Primary responsibilities
- Program management. Run the three 2026–27 studies on time and according to budget. Maintain the schedule against the external deadlines that matter, particularly standard processes, and proactively communicate when a deadline or deliverable is at risk.
- Commissioning. Draft terms of reference and calls for proposals. Run open calls and invited procurements. Assemble and service evaluation panels. Negotiate and manage contracts, milestones and payments with researchers and institutions.
- Research quality. Interrogate proposed methods before committing money. Ensure that protocols are pre-registered where appropriate, that assumptions are published, and that comparability is maintained where several pieces of work must be read together. Catch weak analysis before it's published, not after.
- Partnerships. Work with civil society partners, academic institutions and consultants across the continent, including our collaboration with Animal Law Reform South Africa. Represent AWL in technical and standards settings when possible.
- Use and dissemination. Turn commissioned research and policy work into submissions, policy briefs and materials that decision-makers actually read. Track where the evidence lands and what it changes.
- Funding. Support applications to co-fund the program, working with the Executive Director. Our current research budget is modest, and part of this role is making it go further.
Required qualifications
- The ability to read a quantitative analysis or an economic model and judge whether it is sound. This is the core of the role
- Experience commissioning, managing or supervising research in a non-profit, academic, government or consultancy setting.
- A postgraduate qualification in agricultural or applied economics, animal science, public policy, statistics or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Written English to publication standard
- Sound judgment about evidence, including the confidence to tell a funder, a partner or your own organization that a finding does not hold.
- Experience developing policy positions or engaging legislative, regulatory or institutional processes.
- Willingness to build a body of work in an area where little exists and to start by establishing the facts rather than by arguing a position.
- Comfort working remotely, independently and across time zones.
Preferred Candidate
- Experience in African agriculture or the poultry sector.
- Familiarity with the Three Rs framework (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement), animal research ethics, or institutional ethics review.
- Knowledge in legislative drafting, model provisions or regulatory submissions.
- Familiarity with standards-development processes, whether national, regional or international.
- Experience in research procurement, contracting or grant management.
- A record of published or commissioned work.
- Familiarity with the Open Wing Alliance or the farmed animal welfare movement.
- Fluency in French or Arabic.
What we offer
- A program with real independence written into its terms, and an organization that will back you when a finding is inconvenient.
- Direct influence over what gets researched on farm animal welfare in Africa, at a point when very little of it exists.
- The chance to build AWL’s work on animals used in research from the beginning, and to shape its direction.
- Flexible hours and full remote working.
- Named credit on the programme’s published outputs
How to apply
Learn more and apply here: https://www.animalwelfareleague.org/blog/call-for-research-program-lead
