Head of Research

Key information

Location: Remote, preferably Europe or East Africa, with at least 4 hours a day overlap with Central Africa Time.

Reports to: Alexis Atlani, co-director.

Start Date: January 2027 preferred, could be discussed.

Compensation: The default arrangement for this role is freelance, with expected annual fees of approximately €50,000–€52,000 / $58,000–$60,000 USD.*

Hours: 40 hours a week, could be pro-rated to 32 hours (4 days a week).

Application deadline: Rolling basis, preference given to applications received before Monday November 16th 2026, 9 am Central Africa Time.

* For candidates based in selected European countries, an (fixed-term at first) employment contract may also be possible. In that case, the gross salary will depend on the country of employment and applicable employer costs and benefits. As an indication, we expect this to be approximately €32,000–€40,000 gross per year in France or the Netherlands.

About NOVAH

1 in 4 women worldwide has ever experienced physical and/or sexual violence from their intimate partner. Prevention is essential, and is too often expensive and hard to scale.

NOVAH (No Violence At Home) is an innovative non-profit that uses mass media to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) in a cost-effective and scalable way. We use radio dramas - serialized shows - to shift attitudes and change behaviors, an approach known as entertainment-education (‘edutainment’).

In Rwanda, we have produced two seasons of our flagship program Twubakane (‘Let’s build together’). Our second season is reaching an estimated 0.5-1M listeners, and preliminary RCT results suggest physical violence decreases by 15%.

We are a mission-driven team, with the ambition to design and scale a new, cost-effective solution, to intimate partner violence. We aim to prevent one year of intimate partner violence for less than $200 dollars (the current best bar). Our long-term vision is to reach 10 million listeners across 10 countries by 2036. We aim to start expanding to new countries by the end of 2027.

NOVAH is a registered charity in the Netherlands with ANBI status, and also holds US fiscal sponsorship through Players Philanthropy Fund. It was incubated in 2024 in the Charity Entrepreneurship program of Ambitious Impact.

About the role

The Head of Research will play an essential role in the production & evaluation of our evidence-based shows. Passionate by human behavior, you will manage the research steps to deliver clear and actionable evidence and insights.

In particular, you will lead the research that informs which messages our radio dramas should address and assess whether audiences understand and respond to those messages as intended. You will deliver clear evidence about audience beliefs, reactions, potential misunderstandings and risks so that together with our creative partners we can make informed decisions about the programmes.

This is a hands-on role: for each new season, you will personally lead several research cycles, from defining questions and developing tools to reviewing fieldwork, analysing transcripts and communicating findings. Our research process usually includes the following steps (read more about our approach):

• 1. Formative research: Identify real-life habits, promising storylines and potential messages through in-depth qualitative research with community members. See an example from Season 1 in Rwanda.

• 2. Message testing: Rank and select the most promising messages through focus groups and interviews with listeners of short scenes designed to illustrate each message. Read about the A/B test for Season 1 in Rwanda.

• 3. Pre-airing evaluation: Assess the story's potential to change behaviour, identify necessary improvements and check for potential risks of harm through focus groups and interviews with early listeners of the full season. See an example from Season 2 in Rwanda.

• 4. Post-airing audience survey: Measure how many people listened to the show, who they are and how many episodes they heard through quantitative surveys with community members. See our Season 1 audience survey.

• Qualitative research will be at the heart of your role. Local field researchers conduct interviews and focus groups in the local language (e.g. Kinyarwanda), and professionals transcribe and translate the recordings into English or French (which itself can be AI-translated to English). You will design the research and lead the analysis of the transcripts.

• Quantitative research: You will also work with Alexis to design pragmatic ways to measure our reach and impact, including audience surveys and potentially panel surveys.

You may occasionally support research for potential new countries and other evidence review/ inte