Database Editor​/Lead

Organisation:
Land Conflict Watch

Location:

New Delhi / Remote

Engagement:
Full-time

Duration:
One-year contract, renewable

Remuneration:
Competitive and commensurate with experience, expertise and prevailing market standards

Final date to receive applications:
September 4, 2026 — applications reviewed on a rolling basis

Manage and strengthen India's most comprehensive database on land and natural-resource conflicts

Land Conflict Watch (LCW) and Nut Graph Social Data Lab are looking for an experienced Database Editor/Lead to oversee the quality, integrity and continued development of LCW's national database of land and natural-resource conflicts.

LCW works with a distributed network of 35+ researchers across India who identify, research and document conflicts involving land, forests, commons, infrastructure, conservation, industry and natural resources. Each conflict is documented through a detailed case study and structured data covering its social, legal, economic, environmental and geographic dimensions.

As LCW's work expands, its field‑verified data is also being combined with other datasets and methods, including geospatial analysis, remote sensing and machine learning, to support research on land use, infrastructure, energy transition, natural resources and communities.

The Database Editor/Lead will be the custodian of the LCW database
: ensuring that its data remains rigorous, consistent and current; that its public‑facing conflict case reports meet high editorial standards; and that the database continues to evolve in ways that make it useful for new research.

Rather than being a conventional database‑management role, this position sits at the intersection of interdisciplinary research on land and natural resources, datasets design and analysis, editing and fact‑checking, and field‑research coordination.

You will move between individual conflict cases and the larger patterns they reveal: interrogating evidence and narratives at the case level, while using the database to spot trends, gaps and inconsistencies across hundreds of conflicts. You will also help think critically about what our existing data captures and what it misses.

As LCW's data is increasingly used for new research, you will work with research teams to translate new questions into meaningful data parameters and collection frameworks, and help connect LCW's field‑verified evidence with geospatial, computational and other datasets.

• Oversee the substantive and editorial review of new land‑conflict case studies and their associated structured data, ensuring that evidence, interpretation and data are rigorous and consistent.
• Maintain strong fact‑checking standards across field evidence, government records, legal documents, company disclosures, research reports, media sources and other credible sources.
• Ensure consistency in how conflicts, stakeholders, impacts and other variables are interpreted, classified and coded across the database.
• Maintain high editorial standards for headlines, summaries and case narratives, ensuring accuracy, simplicity, clarity and consistency with LCW's editorial style sheet.
• Review complex or sensitive cases, resolve significant questions around evidence, interpretation and publication, and strengthen LCW's data‑quality, editorial and fact‑checking protocols.

• Oversee the publication and updating pipeline, ensuring that new and existing cases move through research, review and publication in a timely manner.
• Establish systems for tracking conflict case updates through news, community networks and legal, policy or project developments.
• Identify geographic, thematic and sectoral gaps that…