Sillitoe Distinguished Research Leader, Economic Geology

About Us

We are a world-class visitor attraction and leading science research centre. We use the Museum's unique collections and our unrivalled expertise to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today. We care for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years and welcome more than five million visitors annually and 16 million visits to our website.  

Today the Museum is more relevant and influential than ever. By attracting people from a range of backgrounds to work for us, we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things.

We employ 900 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world.

Diversity and inclusion matter to us.

Our vision is of a future where both people and the planet thrive. Diversity is one of our core values and we strive to build a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. All new staff who join us learn about the importance of diversity and inclusion to the Museum and how to contribute to creating an inclusive environment.

We know we have more to do, but we are committed to ensuring that everyone who works at the Museum feels they can thrive and feel valued and respected.

About the role

We employ one of Europe's largest concentrations of earth and life scientists and are home to one of the world’s most extensive collections of natural history specimens, an awe-inspiring resource of nature’s diversity, both past and present. We have a long-standing international reputation for excellence, innovation, and leadership in collections-informed science. We work across taxonomy, systematics and phylogenetics, biodiversity genomics, evolutionary biology, parasitology, ecology, palaeontology, mineralogy, planetary sciences, and bio/geodiversity informatics, at the forefront of leading research.

To support the realisation of our vision of a future where both people and the planet thrive, we focus our science on solutions from and for nature. With strong and rewarding connections with a wide network of museums, universities, research institutes and governments and non-governmental organisations, we also play a major role in several national and international collaborative projects.

Science Group is organised around major collections, research, laboratories, library facilities and data (including digital activities and informatics). Science also hosts the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Nature and boasts a growing Graduate Centre focused on supporting and training the next generation of scientists. We currently supervise over 120 PhD students linked to UK and international universities.

Science activities and collections are currently distributed across our South Kensington site, which contains state-of-the-art research and collection facilities and at Tring, which holds the bird collections. Our Unlocked programme will deliver a move of 38 million specimens, 28 million of which will be housed in our facility situated at the Thames Valley Science Park near Reading, to improve conditions for our collections, provide new opportunities for scientific research, and unlock the future development of the Museum at South Kensington to engage a growing public audience. The new building will be ready for occupation in 2027, and collections moves are expected to be completed by 2031.

Our research is organised around nine themes. These act as catalysts for linking our science across the Museum to identify and address major research challenges and to ensure our work to address the planetary emergency is grounded in solid scientific evidence.

• Biodiversity change: Accelerates the use of big data to understand how and why biodiversity is changing, linking to conservation policy and practice; to gain insights into the factors driving global change, enabling the formulation of effective conservation policies and practices that protect ecosystems and enhance human well-being.
• Biodiversity and Health: Investigates the complex interactions between health and biodiversity from a OneHealth perspective; to understand how ecosystem health influences human and animal health, ultimately finding and promoting holistic approaches to disease prevention and health improvement.
• Collections and Culture: Explores how human societies understand and engage with the natural world, using collections to explore ideas, cultures, histories and impacts; to reveal the diverse ideas, cultures, histories, and impacts of our interactions with nature, fostering a deeper appreciation and awareness of biodiversity's significance.
• Community Science: Transforms the potential of individuals and communities to collaborate in research, building knowledge and agency to take environmental action; to empower individuals and communities to collaborate in research, enhancing their knowledge and agency to drive meaningful environmental action and conservation efforts.
• Evolution of Life: Uses diverse data from the field, collections and laboratories to reveal the diversity of life and to discover its causes, origins and interrelationships; to understand the patterns of distribution and interrelationships of organisms throughout Earth’s history to reveal how life evolved, enabling solutions for nature and future ecosystem function.
• Genomics: Explores and advances understanding of genomic processes driving species evolution and biodiversity by harnessing the vast potential of collections; to understand how genetic variation can lead to differences within and between populations and identify traits that enable organisms to adapt and thrive.
• Planetary Origins and Evolution: Explores the origins and systems underpinning the evolution of the Earth, its Moon, and planetary systems; to answer deep questions about the origins and future of our and other planets to understand our current planetary emergency in the broader context of solar system functioning.
• Resourcing the Green Economy: Accelerates integration of earth and life sciences to responsibly secure natural resources for nature-positive sustainable societies; to integrate knowledge from across our science base, enabling best use of natural resources for human futures while maintaining ecosystem sustainability.
• UK Nature Recovery: Furthers science-led recovery of the UK’s biodiversity by generating data, tools and agency to take nature-positive action; to enable nature positive recovery of ecosystems in the UK for improved and sustainable biodiversity and natural resource conservation.

About you

We are looking for a world-class senior economic geologist to join the NHM to develop economic geology research that contributes to the Museum’s Resourcing the Green Economy research theme. We expect the appointee to devise and lead novel research and contribute to the effective training of next-generation geoscientists to tackle the challenges for 2050 and beyond.

A global 2050 commitment to a net zero society demands a revolutionary change in energy, transport and industrial systems fuelled by new mineral resources. These new deposits will only be found using visionary approaches applied to the future discovery, timely evaluation and recovery of relevant deposits, guided by a new cohort of trained geoscientists. The NHM team has a distinguished history of pioneering research using mineralogy-based mineral deposit geoscience, with close and effective links with the mining industry. Core strengths are the unique collection of reference and benchmark natural samples and a state-of-the-art analytical suite, funded by industrial partnerships and government grants, that covers the full spectrum of material characterisation at mineral to atomic scale.

The appointee will be based at and employed by the Museum, but pending formal negotiations, a visiting role/professorship at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial is envisaged towards strengthening collaborative research and training. The two institutions already have close links and are both located in the museum district of South Kensington and facilities at Imperial include the world-class MAGIC isotopic laboratories.

Both the Museum and Imperial have strong relationships with leading groups around the world, collaborating to deliver ambitious cross-disciplinary research programmes. The NHM has strong and internationally impactful research teams, including LODE and CERCAMS, linking basic research to industry.

The successful candidate will be expected to provide strategic leadership of our work in economic geology, specifically leading projects and programmes contributing to the Resourcing the Green Economy Theme, whilst helping shape our facilities and capacity to provide genuinely world-leading science support to the Museum, external scientists, and other potential users. You will be an established leader and will undertake internationally recognised collaborative research, including the use of collections and/or contribution to collection development through field-based research. Your background in economic geology will complement existing activities at the Museum and Imperial. You will also have excellent strategic and operational leadership skills and experience, and the capacity to work with and build successful teams and collaborative partnerships.

Thriving at the Museum: the way we work

We are proud to work at the Museum and have identified the qualities we all need to embody to reach our shared ambition. This sits alongside the Museum’s values and forms the framework for the way we work.

Find out more here

What we offer

• 27.5 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays (full time equivalent)
• Generous defined contribution Natural History Museum Pension Scheme (employer contribution 4 - 10%)
• Season ticket, bicycle and rental loan
• Life insurance
• Free admission to our exhibitions and many other paid exhibitions at museums, galleries and institutions across London and the UK.
• Staff discount at our Museum shops and cafes
• We offer a wide variety of training initiatives and opportunities to build skills. Investing in staff development is important to us, and we are ambitious about helping staff to grow and fulfil their potential.
• Affordable membership to the Civil Service Sports Council which offers a range of benefits including an extensive list of special offers and reduced entry fees at a selection of cinema chains, theme parks, theatres, retailers and supermarkets. It also provides entry to up to 300 English Heritage sites and other national treasures. For more details, visit https://www.cssc.co.uk
• Membership to our Sports and Social Association (for a small fee), which includes access to our in-house gym and clubs such as football, softball, table tennis and tennis and classes in Middle Eastern dance, yoga and Tai Chi

Hybrid working

We are working towards a vision where both people and planet thrive, and nothing gives a greater connection with this, than seeing first-hand, the visitors, scientific research and collections that all of our work is inspired by and working side by side with the teams delivering the visitor experience and events.  We also recognise the benefits and flexibility that hybrid working brings. We operate a hybrid working model that requires regular, weekly attendance for this role, with the precise pattern of days on site and worked from home to be agreed with your manager.