Research and analysis

Research support for funded projects

Freelance, contract and fixed-term research assistance from an analyst with published outputs, simulation design experience and a habit of documenting every decision so the work can be re-run.

Who this is for. These services are for universities, research groups, think tanks, policy consultancies, NGOs and evaluation teams. They are commissioned by the organisation that owns the research.

They are not for students. On God Advisory does not write, co-write, edit or contribute to any piece of work that a student submits for assessment, at any level, at any institution, whatever the fee. If that is what you need, we will decline and say why.

Services

What can be commissioned

Available by the day, by the project, or as a fixed-term contract.

Literature review and evidence synthesis

Systematic searching, screening against stated criteria, extraction into a structured table, and a written synthesis that separates what the evidence supports from what it does not.

Data cleaning and reproducible datasets

Raw material turned into analysis-ready data, with every cleaning choice, assumption and exclusion documented so the analysis can be re-run and audited by someone else.

Social network analysis

Network construction, community detection and centrality measures in Gephi and NodeXL, with the interpretation limits stated rather than glossed over.

Simulation and wargame design

Scenario and turn structure, actor briefs, adjudication rules, facilitation on the day, and conversion of participant decisions into a coded dataset you can analyse afterwards.

Mixed-methods evaluation

Evaluation design, participant sessions, qualitative coding alongside quantitative measures, and reporting written to satisfy a funder rather than to flatter a project.

Research writing for two audiences

Findings written up for an academic readership, and the same findings rewritten for a policy or practitioner audience without losing the caveats that matter.

Selected work

Four projects, with the actual numbers

DARe Research HubEPSRC and DfT funded2025 to 2026

Rail resilience research, University of Glasgow

Research Assistant on a funded hub working with ScotRail, Network Rail, the Rail Safety and Standards Board and British Transport Police.

Designed and facilitated simulation-based experiments eliciting behavioural responses under uncertainty across 20 participant sessions, generating both qualitative and quantitative datasets, and collated mixed-methods evaluation data for funder reporting.

Named co-author on two published research outputs.

Experimental Project ResearcherHOPE AGE with UNOCHA2024 to 2025

Humanitarian crisis simulation

Experimental Project Researcher on a wider programme of simulation work. The HOPE AGE crisis simulation, co-facilitated with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, was one part of that role; it involved coordinating digital operations and delivery under acute time pressure.

Ran end-to-end wargames playtesting across multiple sessions with 60 participants, producing strategic recommendations from participant data on coordination breakdown and decision-making under incomplete information.

60 participants, multiple sessions, recommendations delivered.

Master's dissertationUniversity of Glasgow2025

Counter-radicalisation policy simulation

Designed and adjudicated a two-scenario, four-turn stakeholder simulation across six institutional and community actors, coding 39 adjudicated decisions into a structured dataset with binary thematic flags.

Built reproducible derived metrics with explicit decision rules, then separated outcomes driven by intervention quality from those driven by chance, and stated the small-sample limitations rather than overclaiming.

Directional inference, honestly bounded.

Charles UniversityNetwork analysis2024

Anti-vaccine narrative networks

Built a 933-node, 1,343-edge interaction network in Gephi, ran modularity-based community detection at 0.897 and isolated four distinct geographic clusters.

Ranked accounts by degree, eigenvector and betweenness centrality, then tested that ranking against qualitative profiling and established that centrality alone overstates influence without narrative context.

Findings presented to an academic and policy audience.

Project descriptions reflect work carried out in the roles named. Published outputs are listed under the author name Arthur, J. Details of funders, partners and co-authors are available on request.

How the work is done

The part that matters more than the tools

One

Decisions are written down

Cleaning choices, assumptions and exclusions recorded as they are made
Derived metrics built from explicit rules, not from memory
Work handed over so a colleague can re-run it without you

Two

Limits are stated

Small samples described as small
Directional findings not dressed up as causal ones
Where a metric overstates the case, the analysis says so

Three

Deadlines are real

Delivery under acute time pressure, on funded projects with partners waiting
Scope agreed in writing before work starts
Problems raised early rather than at the deadline

Background

Postgraduate: International Masters (IntM) in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies (Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree: University of Glasgow, Dublin City University, Charles University)
Also: MA National Security Law and Practice, University of Ghana. BSc Forensic Science, University of Cape Coast
Tools: Gephi, NodeXL, Excel to an advanced level, R, SQL, Tableau
Certification: Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
Data handling: Experienced with GDPR and institutional data protection policy

Working arrangements

Based in Glasgow and available for remote work across the UK and internationally, with the right to work in the UK.

Engagements can be freelance by the day or by the project, a fixed-term contract, or a named role on a grant application. Scope, rate and deliverables are agreed in writing before work begins.

Full CV, published outputs and references available on request. Career history and publications are also listed on LinkedIn.

Research engagements are contracted separately from the education advisory service, on terms agreed for the specific project.

Have a project that needs an extra pair of hands?

Tell me the question you are trying to answer, the deadline, and what you already have. You will get an honest read on whether I am the right person for it.

Email info@ongodadvisory.com LinkedIn