Project: Airbel Impact Lab, Research and Innovation at the IRC. With over 70 million people displaced, the world is facing an unprecedented crisis. To address the evolving and growing nature of this crisis requires not just more aid, but new thinking. There is a lack of proven, cost-effective, scalable services for people affected by crisis. In some cases, there is a lack of evidence on what works. In others, evidence shows existing solutions are effective, but we need to find new ways of delivering them at scale in fragile states. That’s why the IRC created the Airbel Impact Lab. Our goal is to find and advance breakthrough solutions — with people and ethics at the center of all we do.
Behavioral science is one of the innovative approaches we use at the Airbel Impact Lab to design and test solutions in these contexts. It combines theories and evidence from economics, psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science to build an understanding of human behaviors and decision-making processes. Insights from behavioral science can be rapidly tested and applied to the design of humanitarian policies and interventions to ensure they are effectively delivered and adopted in practice.
User-centered design is another innovative approach used at the Airbel Impact Lab to ensure that solutions are informed by our clients’ preferences and priorities. It is the practice of understanding the problem from the clients’ perspective, looking for inspiration and opportunities for solutions from their stories, and testing and improving early solution ideas quickly before investing in implementation. This approach is used to seek innovative ideas for problems for which solutions do not already exist or for adapting solutions to new contexts.
Role: The Behavioral Insights (BI) practice at the Airbel Impact Lab has set out some strategic objectives 1) to build external presence and reputation outside of IRC through building new partnerships, sharing knowledge and new evidence, and establishing itself as a thought leader in using Behavioral Insights (BI) to achieve improved humanitarian outcomes and 2) support the internal use of BI inside IRC, by creating new communications or knowledge management products to aid the use of BI in decision making.
The Behavioral Insights, Innovation and Design Fellow will work with the Behavioral Insights Practice team at Airbel Impact Lab to help the team develop a set of communications deliverables, and support external communications with others in the sector, to support this objective.
The fellow will be responsible for designing and drafting communications, evidence, and knowledge management products, as ways of communicating both internally in IRC and externally with partners. This fellowship would be an excellent opportunity for someone looking to further familiarize themselves with behavioral insights, or research and innovation in the humanitarian sector, by improving communication of our work, all while building their network and developing new connections in this field.
The Airbel Impact Lab is also working with a third-party company to run a crowdsourcing competition wherein the public is invited to submit innovative solution ideas to defined humanitarian challenges. The fellow will be responsible for developing internal and external communications to promote the challenges, participate in the initial evaluation of submitted solutions, and provide strategic support on how solutions might be further tested or implemented.
Potential deliverables:
- Behavioral Insights Communications and Partnerships
- New communications, evidence, or knowledge management products, including case studies, blogs, articles, presentations, and others. This may include:
- Externally facing communications: 1-2 blogs, conference presentations, articles, or thought pieces related to BI in the humanitarian sector, drafted collaboratively with the team and published on the Airbel Medium page or external pages (such as academic journals or practitioner pages).
- Internally facing communications: 1-2 communications or knowledge management templates created for the Behavioral Insights Practice, with graphics., such as a BI toolkit, a training, evidence review template, or tool that can support the use of behavioral sciences in strategic or programmatic decision-making.
- Externally facing partner engagement & communications: Support the team in communications with new global partners, through virtual events and knowledge exchanges, such as setting up and managing a webinar to share our work and approach.
- New communications, evidence, or knowledge management products, including case studies, blogs, articles, presentations, and others. This may include:
- Innovation Crowdsourcing
- New communications products which may include:
- Externally facing communications: 1 blog, review of 1-2 press releases, and 4-6 Twitter or LinkedIn content.
- Internally facing communications: Internal leadership memo that summarizes the crowdsourcing process and impact.
- Evaluation of submitted solution ideas for three humanitarian challenges. Evaluation criteria will be provided and socialized.
- Strategic support on solution implementation: The fellow will collaborate with UCD staff and the IRC challenge-submission team to brainstorm the next steps once a solution is awarded.
- New communications products which may include:
Potential travel involved: No travel will be involved for this position.
Desired Skills:
- A passion for, and interest in, communications or managing partnerships.
- Excellent writing and visual communication skills, through online articles, blogs, presentations, and reports.
- Strong interpersonal communication skills, especially in developing and managing external-facing partnerships.
- Visual communications skills in using Microsoft or Google Drive products such as PowerPoint or Google Slides.
- Experience organizing and managing virtual events with global stakeholders would be a plus.
- Graphic design experience, with knowledge of programs such as Publisher or Adobe Suite (Indesign) is a plus.
- Interest in humanitarian research, innovation, or behavioral insights would be a plus.
Requirements: Students must be a matriculated graduate or Ph.D. student at The New School. Fellows are hired as Research Associates by The New School.
Work Environment: This fellowship will work with the Airbel Impact Lab based in the IRC’s HQ in New York City. While this fellowship is remote, all Fellows must be physically located in the US.
Fellowship Length: This fellowship carries a maximum of 35 hours/week during the summer semester (May 20 – August 25, 2024), and a maximum of 20 hours/week during the Fall 2024 semester (August 26 – December 22, 2024). Continuation into Spring 2025 is potentially available. The ideal candidate will be able to commit to both the Summer and Fall semesters.
How to apply: The deadline to apply is March 30, 2024. Please submit one PDF document containing a cover letter, CV/resume, and two work samples (writing and/or design portfolio – 5 pages maximum per sample) to Catherine McGahan, McGahanC@newschool.edu, and Nicole Tuszynski, tuszynsn@newschool.edu.
Interviews will be conducted in early April via Zoom.
Team: Airbel Impact Lab, Research and Innovation at the IRC. The Airbel Impact Lab designs, tests, and scales life-changing cost-effective solutions for people affected by conflict and disaster. By applying the IRC’s deep technical expertise and field experience with a range of skills from the behavioral sciences, human-centered design, research, and multi-disciplinary problem-solving in humanitarian contexts, we work to develop breakthrough solutions that combine creativity and rigor, openness and expertise, and a desire to think afresh with the experience of a large-scale implementing organization. Within Airbel, the Best Use of Resources team provides analysis and decision-making support to improve the cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness of IRC programs.