Department: IMPACT
Position: Research Manager
Contract duration: 12 months
Starting Date: April 2025
Location: Kabul, Afghanistan
Afghanistan has endured 40 years of complex crisis, characterized by conflict, insecurity, regime change, and climate disasters. After the Taliban took over in 2021, the country was further affected by a collapsing economy and uncertainty about the future. The economic situation has stabilized in the years since but remains fragile – humanitarian assistance still provides much needed help for large population groups across the country.
IMPACT has been active in Afghanistan since 2016, launching its flagship REACH and AGORA initiatives in 2018. Working across all 34 provinces, the Afghanistan team’s research supports and facilitates emergency response efforts immediately following conflict or natural disaster as well as more long-term oriented humanitarian planning, prioritization, resilience and recovery activities. IMPACT Afghanistan has three main research portfolios that focus on programming in each of these areas: one portfolio focuses on inter-sectoral research that feeds directly into emergency humanitarian planning and prioritization, the second involves working closely with partners and coordinating bodies to improve and increase the sustainability of programs, and the third uses area-based assessments to support longer-term durable solutions in Afghanistan.
IMPACT Afghanistan’s Inter-Sectoral Research Unit hosts two of the largest, most impactful assessments in the mission. First, the Whole of Afghanistan (WoA) Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessment is one of the largest household assessments done in Afghanistan every year across the humanitarian and development spaces, and serves as the foundational data source for establishing humanitarian need in the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP). In recent years, findings from this assessment have also informed the bi-annual Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) process as well as development documents such as the annual Socio-Economic Outlook. Second, the Humanitarian Situation Monitoring assessment is done on a quarterly basis with key informants across the entire country, and serves as a data source for response-wide seasonal prioritization exercises and the mid-year HNRP revision. In 2025 it will also be a foundational data source for more regular real-time monitoring of the evolution of need over the course of the year. As humanitarian funding continues to decline, the prioritization work of IMPACT becomes more critical for actors looking to be more impactful with less resources, and the leader of the ISRU will be well placed to speak to many of the important prioritization exercises happening on the response in 2025.
IMPACT Afghanistan is looking for a dynamic Research Manager with excellent research skills to head the ISRU, managing both existing research cycles and driving its strategic direction.
The Research Manager will be responsible for overseeing the development, strategy, and management of the Inter-Sectoral Research Unit, under the supervision of the IMPACT Deputy Country Coordinator, the IMPACT Country Representative, and IMPACT HQ in Geneva. The candidate should be comfortable representing IMPACT with donors and be able to coordinate and liaise with a range of senior external partners.
The role of the Research Manager is to drive the strategy and workstreams of the ISRU at a moment in Afghanistan where it is critical that prioritization exercises for limited funding are based on solid evidence. This position requires a profile that can be both analytical and strategic, as the Research Manager’s job on a daily basis can range from coordinating with external partners (whether data actor, humanitarian cluster, or donor) to analytical oversight of research products to logistics.
