Consultancy: Tech skills for tech justice research study

The European AI & Society Fund and Civitates are looking for a research partner to understand how increased access to tech skills could support Europe’s tech justice community to achieve their goals. 

Deadline for submissions: 3 February 2025 

Available budget: up to €13,500 for around 20 days 

Delivery: February – July 2025 

There is a perceived need for civil society groups working on tech justice in Europe to have better access to tech skills to be able to do their work effectively. We wish to commission research that will transform anecdotal feedback about learnings, challenges, and opportunities into a strategic study that will empower civil society, technologists, and philanthropies to strengthen technical expertise within civil society across Europe. 

With this we do not mean internal IT infrastructure for NGOs but rather the knowledge and understanding to interrogate the technologies and technology products that organisations are addressing in their work and to make use of regulation and other mechanisms that could achieve accountability over them. 

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in working at the intersection of civil society focused on tech accountability in Europe, philanthropic organisations and technical communities advancing public interest agendas. The person also understands the challenges and opportunities civil society groups and technologists are facing when seeking to leverage technical skills for tech justice objectives, has experience in qualitative research methods and can rely on existing networks.  

Here’s what we hope to achieve with this research: 

• Identify in what contexts tech skills could benefit civil society’s work on tech justice in Europe and what specific skillsets are required   

• Identify and draw lessons from examples where this has been done well both in our field and in adjacent communities    

• Understand what barriers to integrating tech skills exist from the side of civil society groups 

• Understand what barriers prevent technologists from working in civil society contexts   

• Understand what previous attempts funders have made to resource tech skills in this and adjacent fields and what lessons can be drawn from this    

• Provide clearly communicated findings and actionable recommendations to each of the stakeholder groups enabling them to address the challenges identified in the research  

We value diversity and especially encourage applications from people who consider themselves underrepresented in this sector. 

The delivery of this consultancy is foreseen in February- July 2025, with remote collaboration during the process. We anticipate that the work will take around 20 days in total, including research interview, drafting and editing work. Due to the size of the task, researchers are welcome to solicit additional support. It will be the responsibility of the Lead researcher to bring in additional expertise if needed.  

For more information about the research opportunity and how to apply, consult the Terms of Reference.  

We’re welcoming proposals until 3 February 23:59 CET. Please upload them to our application platform Optimy via this link.  

For any questions related to the Terms of Reference or the application system please email info@europeanaifund.org and secretariat@civitates-eu.org 

This research project is a collaboration between the European AI & Society Fund and Civitates and was consulted with the Digital Freedom Fund and Aspiration. We are grateful for their inputs and expertise.