Benchmarking and Advancing the Citizen Prosperity Index

Key Placement Information

Closing Date
Thursday 30th April 2026

Start Date
Monday 1st June 2026 (or as soon as possible thereafter. It is flexible)

Duration
3-months (or part-time equivalent)

Full-time or Part-time
Flexible

In Person, Online or Hybrid
Online

Job Sector
Public

Project Areas
Research, Data

How to Apply
Submit a CV, cover letter and the ESRC funding permission form

Applicant Eligibility
This opportunity is only accepting applications from Postgraduate Researchers who began receiving ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) funding in or after Autumn 2024 to undertake a Research in Practice (RinP) placement as part of their studentship.

Project Description

The Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) is an interdisciplinary research institute at University College London (UCL). It develops new frameworks for measuring and advancing prosperity beyond GDP.

The Citizen Prosperity Index (CPI) is IGP’s flagship multidimensional prosperity measure. As the index matures and gains policy traction, a set of questions becomes pressing.

• How does the CPI compare with established frameworks such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation, the ONS Measures of National Wellbeing Dashboard, and the SAGE index?
• Where do they converge, where do they diverge, and what does each capture that the others miss?
• Can beyond-GDP frameworks designed for national comparison be meaningfully disaggregated to subnational level?
• And can the CPI’s own methodology be improved through alternative weighting strategies, machine learning approaches to dimension validation, or structural equation modelling?

This placement offers a PhD researcher the opportunity to investigate one or more of these questions. The researcher will work with a range of secondary data sources and will be expected to identify and use the datasets best suited to their research focus.

Please note this opportunity has been advertised across multiple Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs).