Research Assistant

Trinity College Dublin is home to an historic ‘library of plants’ – an herbarium – of immense cultural, historical, and scientific value. The herbarium contains over 500,000 dried, pressed and identified plants that have been preserved within large leather-bound books dating back to the age of global exploration (including Captain Cook’s voyages 1772-1775), and as individual meticulously labelled sheets with historic inscriptions of their collector’s name, place, and date of collection. These plant specimens contain irreplaceable scientific information that can be mined using advanced scientific techniques to track trends in global biodiversity, to examine the impacts of climate change on our natural world and to inform conservation efforts.

The herbarium has recently received funding, from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, for an ambitious, eight-year project that aims to transform Trinity’s herbarium into a modern, plant science research laboratory and to digitise and image our specimens, so they can be made available online to the global research opportunity.

We are seeking an experienced research assistant to manage the transformation of the herbarium. This is a two-year post, where the successful applicant will act as a point of contact between the herbarium curators and contractors to ensure that the herbarium transformation is carried out on time, on budget, and with the minimum disruption possible to the collections.

Please see full job description and application procedure below.

At Trinity, we are committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion. Trinity welcomes applications from all individuals, including those applicants with disabilities, those who may have had non-traditional career paths, those who have taken time out for reasons including family or caring responsibilities. We also welcome international applicants including those whom have been displaced due to war.

Trinity College Dublin is Ireland’s premier University. We are an EU Sustainable Gender Equality Champion and we hold an Athena Swan Silver award, recognising our ongoing work to advance gender equality both within Trinity and in the Higher Education sector. Trinity is committed to supporting work-life balance and to creating a family-friendly working environment.