Temporary Vision Research Assistant

Salary: £33,951 to £35,608 per annum, pro rata

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 19 October 2026

Would you like to do research in basic vision science with real-world applications? Are you highly skilled in colour vision testing and keen to develop your expertise in behavioural experiment design? If yes, we want someone like you for the role of temporary part-time research assistant in the Hurlbert Colour Vision Lab at Newcastle University.

Colour vision deficiency (CVD) affects approximately 8% of males and 0.5% of females in the UK. People with CVD are often excluded from professions and occupations, for example, authorised firearms officer roles in the UK police, where colour cues are considered critical to job performance. Yet empirical evidence is lacking for the relationship between CVD and operational performance in many such roles.

In this role, you will carry out specialist colour vision testing of individuals with normal and anomalous colour vision to characterise their low-level chromatic discrimination abilities and diagnose the specific type of colour vision deficiency where it exists. You will also help to design and run additional experiments assessing the use of colour in specific visual tasks. You will be responsible for recruiting participants, carrying out the specialist assessments, collating the data, and preparing summary charts of the results.

You will work as a research assistant within a research team, taking part in regular project meetings that may involve external collaborators, presenting and discussing your progress, and contributing to written reports of the research.

In this temporary part-time role, you will be based at our Newcastle upon Tyne campus that has excellent transport links and state of the art facilities. You will also have working space and resources in the Biosciences Institute in the Faculty of Medical Sciences. The working hours will generally be 10 hours/week, with testing of participants generally happening between 8am and 6pm on weekdays.

The total number of hours for this role will ideally be between 120 and 150, with the role starting no later than 3 August 2026 and finishing before 31st December 2026, but there is flexibility around the hours and timings.

Please contact Professor Anya Hurlbert () or Ilgin Cebioglu () for informal enquiries.

Find out more about the Faculty of Medical Sciences here:

Find out more about our Research Institutes here:

• Collect, analyse and interpret research data and draw conclusions on the outcomes
• Co-ordinate own work with that of others, use problem solving to affect the achievement of research objectives and contribute to the planning of the project(s)
• Present information on research progress and outcomes to a Principal Investigator or groups overseeing the research project
• Write up results from own research activity and provide input into the research project’s dissemination, in whatever form (report, papers, chapters, books)
• Use research resources (including, where required, laboratories, workshops and specialist equipment) as appropriate
• Recruit participants, assess colour vision abilities using specialist tasks
• Contribute to discussions on experiment design

• Understanding and facility with use of colour science concepts, terminology, and metrics
• Previous direct experience of and proven skills in colour vision testing
• Previous direct experience of recruiting participants for colour vision experiments
• High level of practical…