Head of Gender, Inclusion and Protection

About Bodhi

Bodhi Global Analysis is a woman-led international development research consultancy established in London in 2017, with subsidiaries in Nairobi (2018), Singapore (2023), Dar es Salaam (2025), and The Hague (2026). We specialise in formative and evaluative research through participatory approaches, serving UN agencies, bilateral donors, INGOs, and regional organisations across fragile and conflict-affected contexts. As an ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001 certified organisation, Bodhi maintains rigorous quality control across all operations.

Our clients include UNICEF, UNFPA, UN Women, IOM, IFAD, UNEP and UNOPS, alongside the Commonwealth Secretariat, the British Council, CARE, Concern Worldwide, the Danish Refugee Council, GIZ, Humanity and Inclusion, Interpeace, International Alert, Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Plan International, Save the Children and Search for Common Ground. Bodhi is a signatory to the Women’s Empowerment Principles and is committed to gender parity at every level of the organisation.

About the Role

We are recruiting a senior researcher and team leader to head our Gender, Inclusion and Protection team. This expands the remit of our existing Gender and Inclusion team to reflect growing client demand for work on gender-based violence, protection risk analysis and survivor-centred programming. We are looking for a specialist with genuine technical depth in these areas, not a generalist gender adviser.

This is a hands-on senior role. You will set the technical and commercial direction of the team, but you will also design methodologies, travel to the field, conduct interviews, and write and quality-assure the reports that go to our clients. Roughly one to two months of the year are spent on fieldwork in our operating countries, and report authorship sits squarely within the role rather than being delegated downwards.

The team works across the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding nexus, and its focus spans:

  •  Sexual and gender-based violence: prevalence and risk analysis, service mapping and referral pathway assessment, evaluation of GBV prevention and response programming, and research on harmful practices including FGM/C and child, early and forced marriage
  •  Protection: protection risk analysis, PSEAH assessment and system strengthening, safeguarding review, and research with displaced and conflict-affected populations
  •  Gender analysis and transformative programming: gender mainstreaming, gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) analysis, gender strategy and action plan development, and feminist evaluation
  •  Inclusion of marginalised groups: refugees, internally displaced people, people with disabilities, and people of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, expression and sex characteristics

The role also provides technical support to our Conflict and Peacebuilding team and our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning team through matrixed working, and contributes to organisational leadership as part of the senior management group.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

  • Act as Bodhi’s senior technical authority on SGBV, protection and gender, setting the methodological standards the team works to and signing off the technical approach on all team assignments
  •  Design and apply survivor-centred, trauma-informed and ethically robust research methodologies, including compliance with the WHO ethical and safety recommendations for research on violence against women and equivalent standards for research with children and other groups at heightened risk
  • Establish and quality assure the safeguarding architecture on projects involving GBV disclosure, including referral pathway mapping, agreements with in-country service providers, and protocols for enumerators and note-takers responding to disclosure in the field
  • Develop Bodhi’s methodological offer in this area, including our application of outcome harvesting and contribution analysis, the socio-ecological model, the gender equity continuum, and tools such as the UNFPA-UNICEF Gender-Transformative Accelerator Tool and the CARE Gender Marker

Fieldwork and Data Collection

  • Travel to project countries and lead primary data collection in person, typically for one to two months across the year in total, for trips lasting typically one to two weeks, including in fragile, insecure and logistically difficult environments
  • Conduct senior-level key informant interviews with government officials, donors, UN agencies, protection and GBV cluster actors, implementing partners, and women’s rights organisations
  • Facilitate and moderate focus group discussions with beneficiaries and community members, applying gender-sensitive, conflict-sensitive and trauma-informed approaches, and handling disclosure and distress appropriately when they arise
  • Design and lead case study data collection, including multi-session in-depth interviews with primary subjects and corroborating interviews with connected individuals
  • Apply participatory methods such as community mapping, photovoice, participatory ranking and storytelling approaches where they generate better evidence than conventional interviewing
  • Recruit, train and supervise national consultants, enumerators and note-takers, including delivering enumerator training on research ethics, informed consent, safeguarding and GBV-sensitive interviewing
  • Implement field-level quality assurance, including daily debriefs, spot-checks, back-checks and review of submitted data, and provide real-time contextual and security judgement to the project team

Analysis and Report Writing

  • Lead qualitative analysis, including coding, framework analysis, triangulation across data sources, and synthesis of findings into defensible conclusions
  • Oversee quantitative analysis and interpret survey findings alongside qualitative evidence, working with the wider team where specialist statistical support is required
  • Author inception reports, analytical reports, evaluation reports, policy briefs, gender strategies and action plans, and human impact stories, to a standard that requires minimal client rework
  • Write clearly and accessibly for mixed audiences, translating complex evidence into findings, conclusions and recommendations that clients can act on
  • Quality assure all team outputs as a Directly Responsible Individual, reviewing methodological soundness, analytical rigour, referencing accuracy and adherence to client requirements before anything is submitted
  • Design and facilitate validation workshops and dissemination events, and deliver client training including gender mainstreaming and GBV-sensitive research training where commissioned

Project and Portfolio Leadership

  • Lead, plan and manage all stages of research and evaluation assignments, from methodological design and tool development through data collection to analysis, reporting and validation, delivering to budget and deadline
  • Tailor research designs to the specific evaluation questions and operating context of each assignment rather than applying standard templates, and articulate clearly what each method is intended to achieve within the overall design
  • Oversee several concurrent projects, managing competing deadlines, budgets and internal resourcing across a distributed team

Business Development

  • Identify tender opportunities and lead technical proposal development, including client and programme research, methodological design and win-theme development
  • Work with the Business Development team to convert opportunities, and lead shortlisting interviews and client presentations
  • Build and maintain relationships with clients, donors, partner organisations, senior academics and civil society organisations, with particular attention to GBV and protection networks including the GBV Area of Responsibility, protection clusters and women’s rights organisations in our operating regions
  • Contribute to Bodhi’s external profile through blog posts, published pieces, conference participation and website content
  • Expand Bodhi’s roster of consultants in gender, protection and SGBV, with an emphasis on nationally based specialists in our priority regions

Team and Organisational Leadership

  • Set the vision, strategy and KPIs for the Gender, Inclusion and Protection team, aligned to Bodhi’s organisational goals, and track and report progress against them
  • Line manage team members ranging from Senior Researchers to Research Assistants across multiple countries and time zones
  • Support professional development through performance management, coaching and application of the Bodhi Competency Framework
  • Upskill the wider organisation on gender, protection and SGBV methodologies through internal training, including on handling disclosure and distress in the field
  • Represent the team in company-wide, management and planning meetings, and ensure full compliance with statutory obligations and with Bodhi’s policies, including our safeguarding and PSEAH frameworks

Qualifications and Experience

Essential

  • A PhD in gender studies, development studies, international relations, public health, social anthropology, law or a closely related discipline, with doctoral or subsequent published work demonstrating substantive engagement with gender, protection or violence
  • A minimum of ten years’ professional experience delivering research, analysis and evaluation in international development or humanitarian contexts, including a substantial proportion in fragile and conflict-affected settings
  • Demonstrable technical specialism in sexual and gender-based violence, evidenced by a track record of leading assignments on GBV prevention and response, harmful practices, protection risk analysis, PSEAH, or violence against women and girls. This is a core requirement and applications that do not evidence it will not be shortlisted
  • Fluency in English to native or near-native standard, written and spoken, with the ability to produce client-ready analytical prose
  • Professional working proficiency in at least one of French, Spanish, Portuguese or Arabic, sufficient to conduct interviews, engage counterparts and review documentation in that language
  • Extensive fieldwork experience in fragile and conflict-affected settings, including personally leading key informant interviews, focus group discussions and data collection with populations at heightened risk
  • A strong record of authorship of evaluation reports, analytical studies or policy briefs for institutional clients, with the ability to provide writing samples
  • Applied command of the ethical and safety standards governing research on violence, including the WHO ethical and safety recommendations for researching violence against women, survivor-centred principles, informed consent in low-literacy and high-risk settings, and referral pathway design
  • Conceptual and applied command of gender and inclusion frameworks, including gender mainstreaming, socio-ecological models, the gender equity continuum, intersectionality, feminist research approaches, and localisation in development research
  • Experience line managing researchers at varying levels of seniority, ideally across multiple locations and time zones
  • Mixed-methods competence, including the design and analysis of quantitative surveys as well as qualitative work, and proficiency with tools such as SPSS, Stata, R or Python and NVivo or comparable qualitative analysis software
  • Business development experience, including a demonstrable record of contributing to or leading winning proposals for institutional donors
  • Willingness and ability to travel internationally for approximately one to two months per year, including to insecure environments

Desirable

  • Experience working directly with or for UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, IOM, UN Women, the GBV Area of Responsibility or a protection cluster
  • Working knowledge of an additional language relevant to our operating regions, including Swahili
  • Familiarity with OECD-DAC evaluation criteria, the UNEG Norms and Standards, and the UNEG Code of Conduct
  • Experience with outcome harvesting, contribution analysis, most significant change or other theory-based evaluation approaches
  • A record of peer-reviewed publication or authorship of widely cited grey literature in gender, protection or violence prevention
  • Experience designing or delivering GBV or safeguarding training for client organisations

Core Competencies

  • Leadership: empathetic, person-centred management and the ability to hold a distributed team to a high technical standard
  • Research skills: advanced analytical ability, excellent report writing, and a clear, accessible style that works for both technical and policy audiences
  • Judgement under pressure: sound decision-making in ethically complex field situations, including disclosure, distress and security incidents
  • Attention to detail: commitment to rigorous research standards and to deliverables that require minimal client rework
  • Initiative and flexibility: the ability to work independently, take ownership of the portfolio, and adapt to changing client demands
  • Teamwork: strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work effectively across cultures, languages and time zones
  • Integrity: uncompromising adherence to research ethics, safeguarding principles and do no harm standards

Location and Contracting

We are flexible on location. Bodhi holds legal entities in the United Kingdom, Kenya, Tanzania, Singapore and the Netherlands, and candidates with the right to work in any of these countries can be employed directly. We will also consider outstanding candidates based elsewhere in Europe, West Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa or South East Asia, engaged through a long-term consultancy agreement.

What We Offer

  • Genuine ownership of a technical portfolio, with real autonomy over the direction and growth of the team rather than a delivery-only remit
  • Flexible and remote working, with access to co-working space for team members based near a Bodhi office
  • A work-from-home budget to establish an effective home office
  • 28 days of annual leave plus public holidays for UK-based staff, with equivalent provision elsewhere
  • Comprehensive medical insurance including dental and optical cover for employed staff
  • Language learning support where it contributes to the business
  • Meaningful fieldwork across a global portfolio for UN agencies, bilateral donors and international NGOs

How to Apply

To apply, please click on the ‘Apply’ button below

You will be invited to submit:

  • A CV of no more than three pages demonstrating relevant experience, thematic expertise, fieldwork and authorship
  • A cover letter of no more than two pages addressing how you meet the essential criteria, with specific reference to your SGBV and protection experience, your second language, and your location and right to work
  • One writing sample of which you are the principal author, ideally a published or client-facing report

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Early application is strongly encouraged, as we may close the vacancy before the deadline for exceptional candidates.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Bodhi is a women-owned enterprise committed to gender parity at all levels of the organisation. We particularly welcome applications from women researchers and candidates who bring lived experience from the regions where we work. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religious belief, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, socioeconomic background, or disability.

All appointments are subject to satisfactory references and background checks, including safeguarding checks appropriate to a role involving research with people at heightened risk.

For more information about our organisation, please visit www.bodhiglobalanalysis.com.

At Impactpool we do our best to provide you the most accurate info, but closing dates may be wrong on our site. Please check on the recruiting organization's page for the exact info. Candidates are responsible for complying with deadlines and are encouraged to submit applications well ahead.
Before applying, please make sure that you have read the requirements for the position and that you qualify. Applications from non-qualifying applicants will most likely be discarded by the recruiting manager.