Calleva Centre Postdoctoral Researcher- Combattingmistrust inhealthcare: psychological approach

Final date to receive applications: 4 November 2026

Department: Calleva Research Centre

Employment Type: Fixed Term - Full Time

Location: Central Oxford

Reporting To: Professor Daniel Freeman (Professorial Fellow in Psychology)

Compensation: £42,794 / year

Magdalen College proposes to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher to work on the project Combatting mistrust in healthcare, led by Prof Daniel Freeman (Magdalen College), based at the Calleva Research Centre. The Postdoctoral Researcher will be an experienced qualitative researcher, preferably with research interests in psychology and/or the social sciences. The post will commence on 1 January 2027 or as soon as possible thereafter and will be for three calendar years.

The Calleva Research Centre at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, one of the thirty-eight colleges within the University of Oxford, carries out research and teaching in the full range of science, social science, and humanities subject. For further information on the College see

The College’s Calleva Research Centre was founded in 2010. Its work promotes deeper understanding of the origins, development, causes, and functions of human behaviour, as well as the grand challenges faced by humanity. For further information about the Centre see (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

Details of the research program

The project aims to develop the psychological understanding of health-related mistrust. We will identify causes, counterweight beliefs, and strategies to build trust, focusing on change at the individual level and including recommendations for healthcare organisations.

From 2020, we conducted qualitative and quantitative studies into Covid-19 pandemic vaccine hesitancy, surveying prevalence; exploring underlying psychological factors; and testing types of public health messaging (the Oxford Coronavirus Explanations, Attitudes, and Narratives Survey (OCEAN studies)).

We want to build on this work by focusing on two health-related areas of mistrust: trust in doctors and medical information. The project will be a springboard for the development of solutions to combat such mistrust.

Our research questions:

• What clusters of beliefs around trust and mistrust exist for each of our categories: doctors and medical information? What beliefs are shared across the categories and what are different?
• What psychological factors could be targeted to produce the most improvement in trust?
• How can this understanding be deployed to boost trust? How can counterweight beliefs best be fostered?

To answer these questions, we will undertake a mixed-methods programme of work in collaboration with a lived experience panel (LEAP) comprising individuals with varying levels of trust with regard to the areas of healthcare under investigation. The programme will comprise:

1. Review of existing evidence.

2. An online survey of 2500 UK adults, quota sampled to match the population for age, gender, ethnicity, income, and region. The purpose of the survey is to: a) facilitate recruitment of participants for the qualitative interviews; b) identify the key clusters of beliefs; c) develop our model of causes for mistrust (this will be informed by our vaccine hesitancy framework, developed during our work in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic).

3. Online qualitative semi-structured interviews with at least 30 people recruited via the above survey. Purposive sampling will be used to ensure a mix of age, gender, and geographical location. The participants will comprise half who are broadly trusting and half who are broadly mistrusting. The purpose of these interviews will be to test and refine our causal model and develop potential counterweights to build trust.

We will use qualitative methods with a phenomenological focus, specifically Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). We will carry out detailed annotation of the transcripts, coding the claims and concerns of the participants, identifying patterns of meanings in those claims and concerns, and producing a cross-case analysis.

4. A second online survey, again with a representative cohort of 2500 UK adults. The focus of this survey will be to test both our refined causal model and the new potential counterweights.

5. Production of a guidance document summarising findings and recommendations, plus a number of academic articles on the quantitative and qualitative studies.

The project team will be led by…