Our studies
Our researchers, survey specialists, data experts, cohort maintenance team and communications staff each play their own important part in what we do. Our work is overseen by a strategic advisory board who help guide our scientific and strategic management.
With responsibility for our overall strategic and scientific management, this group includes the team leader from each of the different working areas within the centre.
Phone: 020 7612 6231
Email: alissa.goodman@ucl.ac.uk
Alissa Goodman is Professor of Economics, Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, and Co-Director of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study, a project funded by ESRC to test the feasibility of a new birth cohort for the UK. She is a Co-Investigator on two further new national cohort projects, Children of the 2020s and the COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities Study. Alissa joined CLS in 2013 as PI of the 1958 National Child Development Study, having previously worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, where she served as its Deputy Director (2006-2012), and Director of its Education and Skills research sector.
Alissa’s main research interests relate to inequality, poverty, education policy, and the intergenerational transmission of health and wellbeing. Alissa was awarded a CBE for services to social science in 2021.
Phone: 020 7911 5325
Email: matt.brown@ucl.ac.uk
Matt is a Senior Survey Manager for our NCDS and BCS70 cohort studies. Matt’s role involves being responsible for the day-to-day management of these studies, designing and developing data collection strategies and questionnaires, and working with fieldwork contractors to ensure successful delivery of the projects.
His research interests are in survey methodology, particularly in relation to the design and implementation of longitudinal surveys.
Phone: 020 7911 5510
Email: l.calderwood@ucl.ac.uk
Lisa is a Professor of Survey Research. She has over 20 years’ experience of the design and implementation of complex, large scale longitudinal surveys.
Her research areas include non-response, innovations in participant engagement, new technologies and mixed-modes of data collection, administrative data linkage and integrating bio-measures in social surveys. Lisa has strong national and international networks within the cohort studies community, is a co-ordinator for the cohort network of Society of Lifecourse and Longitudinal Studies and is involved in the European-wide COORDINATE and GUIDE initiatives.
Phone: 020 7331 5129
Email: E.Fitzsimons@ucl.ac.uk
Emla is the Director of the UK Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study following children born at the turn of the new century. Her research is focused on the development of human capital throughout the life course, and in particular how experiences and circumstances in early life and childhood affect causally the acquisition of skills later on.
Phone: 020 3108 9868
Email: a.goisis@ucl.ac.uk
Alice is Associate Professor of Demography and Research Director at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. She is a family demographer whose research interests span a number of substantive areas in social demography and epidemiology such as the consequence of childbearing postponement on child well-being and the social determinants of health. Alice is PI of an European Research Council Starting Grant to study the effects of Medically Assisted Reproduction on children, adults and parents. From 2019-2021 she was also the PI of an ESRC New Investigator Grant to study only children in the UK.
Phone: 020 7911 5566
Email: morag.henderson@ucl.ac.uk
Dr Henderson’s main area of research is inequalities across the life course. More specifically she examines patterns in educational attainment, bullying and wellbeing.
Morag oversees all aspects of CLS’s work on Next Steps, and leads on the strategic and scientific direction of the study.
Phone: 020 7612 6107
Email: g.ploubidis@ucl.ac.uk
George is Professor of Population Health and Statistics at the UCL Social Research Institute and currently holds the posts of Principal Investigator of the National Child Development Study and 1970 British Cohort Study at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Prior to joining UCL he held posts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Cambridge. George is a multidisciplinary quantitative social scientist and a longitudinal population surveys methodologist. His main research interests relate to socioeconomic and demographic determinants of health over the life course and the mechanisms that underlie generational differences in health and mortality. His methodological work in longitudinal surveys focusses on applications for handling missing data, causal inference and measurement error.
Phone: 0207 612 6530
Email: M.Rainsberry@ucl.ac.uk
Meghan leads CLS’s Communications team, which is responsible for communicating the value of the cohort studies to researchers, cohort members, policy makers, funders and the general public. She develops CLS’s Impact & Communications Strategy, and oversees the centre’s media relations, digital communications, branding, events and research impact. Meghan is also a member of the team leading CLS’s participant engagement work.
Meghan has over 10 years’ experience in public relations, working across the public, private and charitable sectors. She holds an MSc in Media, Communications and Development from the London School of Economics, where she specialised in community engagement and public health.
Phone: 020 7612 6408
Email: a.sanchez@ucl.ac.uk
Aida oversees the full set of activities of the CLS Data Management Team, which includes operational responsibilities in relation to the four cohort studies, external advice on data management, and line management for all members of the Data Management team.
Aida previously worked as the Senior Data Manager in the Whitehall II Study. Her academic background includes a PhD in Computational Chemistry in Spain and working as a postdoctoral fellow at King’s College London. She then worked as an Oracle Database Programmer in several organizations, including the Institute of Cancer Research and UCL.
Email: f.teague@ucl.ac.uk
Felicia leads the Administration team, which is responsible for the financial and project management, strategic planning, governance and reporting and general administration of all research grants held by CLS.
Felicia has over 20 years of experience in external grants management covering pre, contract and post award. She had successfully managed the Funding Support Office for London Met before joining the IoE Research and Consultancy Services in 2013. She later joined UCL Central Research Services and is currently working at Bartlett CASA department.
Our administration team supports the management of the centre as a whole. This includes matters concerning HR and recruitment, and finance.
Email: f.teague@ucl.ac.uk
Felicia leads the Administration team, which is responsible for the financial and project management, strategic planning, governance and reporting and general administration of all research grants held by CLS.
Felicia has over 20 years of experience in external grants management covering pre, contract and post award. She had successfully managed the Funding Support Office for London Met before joining the IoE Research and Consultancy Services in 2013. She later joined UCL Central Research Services and is currently working at Bartlett CASA department.
Magda is a first point of contact for any general finance inquiries at CLS, including purchasing, expenses, IDTs/IDJs and sales invoices.
She also assists the Centre Manager with funding administration when required, monitoring expenditure, and pre-award costing.
Email: j.kubler@ucl.ac.uk
Jay has senior responsibility for ensuring effective and coordinated project management across CLS core-funded work. She develops and manages systems to monitor the Centre’s objectives and deliverables and leads on reporting and assurance to the funder and the management and governance bodies.
Before joining CLS, Jay was the Centre Manager for the Stone Centre at UCL. Prior to this, she managed a 4-year GCRF project, Drugs and (dis)order, at SOAS and was a senior project manager at the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Mel supports coordination of the Centre, providing HR and general centre administration and operational support, as well as assisting with Research Finance related tasks.
Our cohort maintenance team works to keep our study members’ contact details secure and up to date. They also trace study members who we might have lost touch with, for example if they have moved home.
Phone: 020 7612 6857
Email: g.andrew@ucl.ac.uk
George assists with all aspects of the work carried in relation to data collection, documentation and analysis of the 1958 National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study, and the Next Steps study.
Phone: 020 7911 5326
Email: t.ball@ucl.ac.uk
Tony joined the Centre for Longitudinal Studies as Database Manager in October 2013. He is responsible for creating and documenting an address database and user interface for the Next Steps study.
Phone: 020 7612 6902
Email: denise.brown@ucl.ac.uk
Denise’s responsibilities include the administration of the confidential databases containing records of contact information for our cohort members across all four of our longitudinal studies. She is also responsible for the management of CLS’s printing and mailing suppliers, including budget monitoring and associated reporting.
Phone: 020 7911 5550
Email: robert.browne@ucl.ac.uk
Robert is responsible for the development and support of the Cohort Maintenance and Survey Management (CMSM) databases and the survey data processing procedures associated with the NCDS, BCS70 and MCS cohort studies.
Phone: 020 7612 6858
Email: p.deane@ucl.ac.uk
Peter joined CLS in July 2001. He works as part of the specialist Cohort Maintenance Team responsible for maintaining the address information that is essential for maximising responses to surveys of the CLS cohorts.
Peter’s responsibilities include tracing Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) members who have moved, using a variety of specialist and publicly available sources of information.
Phone: 020 7612 6680
Email: shaadi.shidfar@ucl.ac.uk
Phone: 020 7612 6669
Email: m.ukah@ucl.ac.uk
Mary works primarily on 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) as first point of contact for cohort members.
The communications team works to maximise the use and impact of our study data and research findings. They also work with the cohort maintenance team to keep study members up to date on the latest findings from each survey and on plans for future surveys.
Phone: 0207 612 6530
Email: M.Rainsberry@ucl.ac.uk
Meghan leads CLS’s Communications team, which is responsible for communicating the value of the cohort studies to researchers, cohort members, policy makers, funders and the general public. She develops CLS’s Impact & Communications Strategy, and oversees the centre’s media relations, digital communications, branding, events and research impact. Meghan is also a member of the team leading CLS’s participant engagement work.
Meghan has over 10 years’ experience in public relations, working across the public, private and charitable sectors. She holds an MSc in Media, Communications and Development from the London School of Economics, where she specialised in community engagement and public health.
Email: katie.allen@ucl.ac.uk
Katie is responsible for overseeing our website as well as other digital channels. She has previously worked in digital content across the charity, funding and publishing sectors.
Phone: 020 7612 6516
Email: r.bradshaw@ucl.ac.uk
Ryan is Senior Communications Officer for CLS. His role includes media relations, writing press releases, writing and editing publications such as research briefing papers and web content, managing online media and organising events and training.
Eulilee is Digital Communications and Engagement Officer for CLS. Her main responsibility is producing content for the CLS participant websites, social channels and the email newsletters.
She previously worked at UCL Laws as a Communications Officer. Eulilee is also working towards her PhD in Heritage Studies.
Phone: 020 7911 5389
Email: k.butler@ucl.ac.uk
Kath is responsible for managing and developing our website as well as leading a range of discrete communications projects. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in communications, spanning the health, public, and education sectors.
Email: lucy.macewan.20@ucl.ac.uk
Lucy supports CLS’ communications activities, including events, digital, media relations and public engagement, as well as providing administrative support to the Communications & Engagement Team. She has six years of experience in the higher education and charity sectors, working across fundraising and communications.
Email: r.seabrook@ucl.ac.uk
Rachel is responsible for collaborating with researchers and staff across CLS to drive policy engagement and impact. Her role includes developing and expanding CLS’s network of policy stakeholders, seeking out new opportunities to collaborate with government, charities, academics, and others, and advising on CLS’s research output to make an impact on policymaking.
Rachel has over 6 years’ experience as a civil servant, leading the development and implementation of a range of policy interventions across the health and adult social care sectors in England.
Phone: 020 7911 5320
Email: richard.steele@ucl.ac.uk
Richard is responsible for CLS event coordination, website support and participant engagement support. He is experienced both in event organisation and communications. He has previously worked for both commercial companies and a leading professional body.
Email: naomi.yohendran@ucl.ac.uk
Naomi is our Communications and Engagement Officer. She works on a range of communications activities and campaigns to help keep our cohort members engaged in our studies and up to date on new findings.
The data management team manages the information collected by field work agencies. They are responsible for cleaning and depositing the data with the UK Data Service. They also produce data documentation to help researchers understand and use the study data.
Phone: 020 7911 5311
Email: v.agalioti-sgompou@ucl.ac.uk
Vilma has been a member of the CLS Research Data Team since 2015. She is responsible for the curation and management of the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the Early Life Cohort – Feasibility Study (ELC-FS). Previously she managed the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS).
Vilma is the team’s technical lead and primarily works on the team’s software development (Python) for data and database management (PostgreSQL), especially automating and standardising processes across the CLS cohort studies. She also has line management duties.
Before joining CLS, Vilma worked on a variety of population-wide surveys. She has a PhD in Survey Methodology from the University of Essex and has taught programming (R, Python, SQL), survey design and statistical analysis.
Alice is involved in the operational side of the CLS data sharing programme, and supports the technical management of the CLS cohort research metadata.
Alice has a background in biomedical and population health research and data management, previously located in Melbourne, Australia and latterly Cambridge in the UK. She first joined UCL in February 2022 to support the Data Audit of UK longitudinal population studies, which was commissioned to CLOSER by the ESRC & MRC.
Liam is responsible for the management of the linked geographical data for all cohort studies. His role also includes data management for the Millennium Cohort Study and assistance with technical development.
Liam joined CLS after having completed a BSc and MSc, both in Mathematics, at King’s College London.
Phone: 020 7911 5348
Email: maggie.hancock@ucl.ac.uk
Maggie is currently responsible for the design and development of the CLS metadata database and provides technical and advisory support to the CLS research data management team.
She has previously managed the research data for the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study. She has an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and an MRes in Social Research.
Email: sarah.kerry.15@ucl.ac.uk
Sarah primarily handles linked medical records including records from NHS Digital, NHS Scotland and NHS Wales. Her role also includes leading on the disclosure/sensitivity analysis of data and development of the internal training resources.
Sarah has an MSc in Data Science for Health Research and Biomedicine from UCL and previously worked in the Population Health Research Institute at St Georges, University of London.
Email: silvia.mendonca@ucl.ac.uk
Silvia supports data management for all cohort studies, focusing on data quality and availability.
She has previously worked at the University of Cambridge, first as a statistician and then as a data manager. She has experience working with health care data including health administrative datasets, public surveys and electronic primary care records. She has an undergraduate degree in Biology and an MSc in Biostatistics.
Email: nureen.zaki@ucl.ac.uk
Nureen will be involved in the operational side of the CLS data sharing programme and the technical management of the CLS cohort research data. Nureen has a Bachelor’s Degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan, where she also worked as a research technician and lab manager. Following her Masters in Bioinformatics program at the University of Edinburgh, she then completed a computational internship on the meta analysis of whole genome studies.
Phone: 020 7612 6914
Email: andrew.peters@ucl.ac.uk
Andrew is the Data Manager for the 1970 British Cohort Study, supporting data collection throughout fieldwork, and preparing research data for deposit. He is also responsible for linked education, and legacy data within the data management team.
Previously Andrew oversaw the deposit of all three waves of the Covid-19 survey for NCDS, BCS70, Next Steps and MCS.
Phone: 020 7612 6716
Email: s.rihal@ucl.ac.uk
Sarab is responsible for the data management of survey research data within CLS and works mainly on the Next Steps cohort study.
Email: r.rosenberg@ucl.ac.uk
Rachel is responsible for managing data for the Millennium Cohort Study. A large part of her role involves writing complex syntax to perform data cleaning, manipulation and consistency checking, as well as derivation of variables. Rachel has 10 years of experience working with MCS data.
Rachel has a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Edinburgh. Former employment includes data management/analysis for Lumin Wealth, technical support/sales for the STATISTICA suite of data mining tools and statistical software at StatSoft Ltd, actuarial consultant (pensions) at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, and a few years teaching English to foreigners both in London and Italy.
Phone: 020 7612 6408
Email: a.sanchez@ucl.ac.uk
Aida oversees the full set of activities of the CLS Data Management Team, which includes operational responsibilities in relation to the four cohort studies, external advice on data management, and line management for all members of the Data Management team.
Aida previously worked as the Senior Data Manager in the Whitehall II Study. Her academic background includes a PhD in Computational Chemistry in Spain and working as a postdoctoral fellow at King’s College London. She then worked as an Oracle Database Programmer in several organizations, including the Institute of Cancer Research and UCL.
The Information governance and data protection team for CLS.
Email: y.benjamin@ucl.ac.uk
Yvonne is the Information Governance and Data Protection lead for CLS.
The Records linkage team are responsible for coordinating and overseeing the centre’s programme of work to link administrative or other relevant records to the study data. These data linkages enhance the research potential of the information we collect through our regular study sweeps.
Phone: 020 7911 5351
Email: k.dennison@ucl.ac.uk
Having previously worked at the UK Data Archive for eighteen years in various roles, with a 15 month secondment to the Australian Data Archive, Karen has an extensive background in data archiving, including in areas around conditions of access, licensing, and data security and protection.
She oversees with the planning and management of the CLS record linkage programme. She is part of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study team, leading the project’s work on accessing sampling frames and record linkages.
Phone: 020 7612 6826
Email: danielle.gomes@ucl.ac.uk
Danielle is responsible for strategic and operational planning and management of CLS’ record linkage programme. Previously, she worked in data liaison for the Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN) at the University of Essex.
Our team of researchers analyse data from our four cohort studies and conduct their own research projects. The team is made up of researchers from a variety of different academic disciplines.
Email: h.beshir@ucl.ac.uk
Habtamu is a Research Fellow at CLS. He is studying the evolution of human capital inequalities over childhood using data from MCS, and linked data from the National Pupil Database (NPD). Habtamu is also interested in the persistence of mental well-being over the life course of children in MCS. He got his PhD in Economics from Lancaster University. Before joining CLS he worked at the University of Bath, Department of Economics, as a Research Associate and Research Fellow.
Phone: 020 7911 5426
Email: david.bann@ucl.ac.uk
David is an epidemiologist with broad interests in population health. David was previously Co-Investigator of the 1958 British birth cohort study (National Child Development Study), and is now strategic lead of social science genetics at CLS. He has responsibility for scientific aspects of genetic-related work at CLS (including data management, storage, access systems, research and collaborations).
Email: g.baranyi@ucl.ac.uk
Gergo is a Senior Research Fellow working with administrative and geospatial data linked to the CLS studies. His research focusses on the life-course impact of physical and social environments on cognitive and mental health, and on healthy ageing.
Before joining CLS, Gergo was a research associate at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh where he completed his PhD on area-level crime and mental health. Gergo is a psychologist with expertise in public health and geography; he has worked in academia in the UK and Germany and was a technical consultant at the World Health Organization.
Email: charlotte.booth@ucl.ac.uk
Charlotte is a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies investigating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on population health and wellbeing. She is currently working as part of the National Core Studies project, which is a multidisciplinary team science approach to understanding Covid-19 effects, using data from multiple cohort studies across the UK.
Charlotte has a BSc in Psychology from the University of East Anglia, MSc in Research Methods from the University of Essex, and DPhil in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford. Her research background focuses on the mechanistic determinants of mental ill health.
Email: Charis.staatz.17@ucl.ac.uk
Charis is a post-doctoral Research Fellow working with Dr Richard Silverwood and Professor George Ploubidis. She is researching what the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been on health and well-being. She is working as part of the National Core Studies project, and the CLS COVID-19 project.
Charis completed her PhD in Social Epidemiology at UCL from 2017 to 2022 and has a BA in Human Sciences from the University of Oxford. During her PhD, Charis undertook a Research and Policy Engagement Internship with CLOSER, working on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Phone: 020 7911 5325
Email: matt.brown@ucl.ac.uk
Matt is a Senior Survey Manager for our NCDS and BCS70 cohort studies. Matt’s role involves being responsible for the day-to-day management of these studies, designing and developing data collection strategies and questionnaires, and working with fieldwork contractors to ensure successful delivery of the projects.
His research interests are in survey methodology, particularly in relation to the design and implementation of longitudinal surveys.
Phone: 020 7911 5510
Email: l.calderwood@ucl.ac.uk
Lisa is a Professor of Survey Research. She has over 20 years’ experience of the design and implementation of complex, large scale longitudinal surveys.
Her research areas include non-response, innovations in participant engagement, new technologies and mixed-modes of data collection, administrative data linkage and integrating bio-measures in social surveys. Lisa has strong national and international networks within the cohort studies community, is a co-ordinator for the cohort network of Society of Lifecourse and Longitudinal Studies and is involved in the European-wide COORDINATE and GUIDE initiatives.
Phone: 020 7612 5357
Email: utnvdch@ucl.ac.uk
Phone: 020 7612 6877
Email: b.dodgeon@ucl.ac.uk
At CLS, Brian works in the Cross-Cohort research programme (CCRP), the CLS Missing Data Project, and the Cohort Studies User Support Programme, specialising in the NCDS and BCS70 cohorts.
His specialist areas of research and methodology are: changing socio-economic indicators; predictors of well-being over the life course; cognition & social capital; education and fertility; clustering of risk behaviours; and dealing with missing data.
Phone: 020 7331 5129
Email: E.Fitzsimons@ucl.ac.uk
Emla is the Director of the UK Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study following children born at the turn of the new century. Her research is focused on the development of human capital throughout the life course, and in particular how experiences and circumstances in early life and childhood affect causally the acquisition of skills later on.
Email: a.gaia@ucl.ac.uk
Alessandra contributes to the CLS Applied Survey Methods research programme, focusing on approaches to maximising survey response, measurement of sensitive topics, innovations in data collection, collection of consents for record linkage and of biological samples in social surveys.
She is General Secretary of the European Survey Research Association, associate editor of Survey Research Methods and Research Associate of the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER, University of Essex). Before joining CLS, she was a Research Associate at the headquarters of the European Social Survey and a Research Officer at ISER, home of Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study.
Phone: 020 3108 9868
Email: a.goisis@ucl.ac.uk
Alice is Associate Professor of Demography and Research Director at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. She is a family demographer whose research interests span a number of substantive areas in social demography and epidemiology such as the consequence of childbearing postponement on child well-being and the social determinants of health. Alice is PI of an European Research Council Starting Grant to study the effects of Medically Assisted Reproduction on children, adults and parents. From 2019-2021 she was also the PI of an ESRC New Investigator Grant to study only children in the UK.
Phone: 020 7612 6231
Email: alissa.goodman@ucl.ac.uk
Alissa Goodman is Professor of Economics, Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, and Co-Director of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study, a project funded by ESRC to test the feasibility of a new birth cohort for the UK. She is a Co-Investigator on two further new national cohort projects, Children of the 2020s and the COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities Study. Alissa joined CLS in 2013 as PI of the 1958 National Child Development Study, having previously worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, where she served as its Deputy Director (2006-2012), and Director of its Education and Skills research sector.
Alissa’s main research interests relate to inequality, poverty, education policy, and the intergenerational transmission of health and wellbeing. Alissa was awarded a CBE for services to social science in 2021.
Phone: 020 7911 5566
Email: morag.henderson@ucl.ac.uk
Dr Henderson’s main area of research is inequalities across the life course. More specifically she examines patterns in educational attainment, bullying and wellbeing.
Morag oversees all aspects of CLS’s work on Next Steps, and leads on the strategic and scientific direction of the study.
Phone: 020 7612 6874
Email: h.joshi@ucl.ac.uk
With a background in economic demography, notably on women’s lifetime incomes, Heather became the founder director of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), and of the Centre as a whole. She has retired from these roles but continues to provide advice within and beyond the department, based on that experience.
More recently Heather led a project, ‘Moving Home in the Early Years’ which compared the MCS with a cohort from the US. She is currently a co-investigator on two research projects about child development in the MCS: ‘Trajectories of Conduct Problems from Ages 3 to 11’ (Principle Investigator Leslie Gutman) and ‘Early family risk, school context, and children’s joint trajectories of cognitive ability and mental health’(Principal Investigator Eirini Flouri). In April 2017 Heather became the Executive Editor of the journal, Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies.
Email: dominic.kelly@ucl.ac.uk
Dominic has joined CLS to work on releasing the initial findings from the age 23 sweep of the Millennium Cohort Study. As a developmental psychologist who specialises in adolescence and emerging adulthood, he is particularly interested in the mental health and academic achievement data. He is passionate about the potential of intensive longitudinal and ecological momentary designs for cohort studies. Dominic earned his doctoral degree at the University of Michigan, where he specialised in daily survey studies. His focus was on how daily cognitive factors (i.e., executive functions, spatial skills) are affected by daily non-cognitive factors (i.e., mental health, hormones).
Email: r.mansfield@ucl.ac.uk
Rosie Mansfield is a postdoctoral researcher at CLS investigating the association between social isolation, loneliness and wellbeing across the life course and between five successive British birth cohort studies. The project is funded by the ESRC as part of their Secondary Data Analysis Initiative, and is the first large-scale study of social isolation, loneliness and wellbeing in the UK.
Rosie has a BSc and an MPhil in Psychology from the University of Liverpool, and completed her PhD at the Institute of Education, University of Manchester as part of the Department for Education funded, Education for Wellbeing Programme.
Email: b.moltrecht@ucl.ac.uk
Bettina is a research fellow investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on population health, with a specific focus on mental health, using data from multiple cohort studies and electronic health records. Her wider research focuses on the development and treatment of mental ill-health with a specific focus on emotion regulation and the use of technology to advance assessment and interventions.
Bettina has an MSc in Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience (Maastricht University) and a PhD in Evidence Based Child and Adolescent Mental Health (UCL). She also has a strong clinical background and has worked across different in- and out-patient settings in Germany.
Email: d.moreno@ucl.ac.uk
Darío’s research focuses on the trajectories of mental health and subjective wellbeing in the population and the study of inequalities in these trajectories.
Darío has experience in the study of mental health outcomes and healthy ageing in observational and interventional studies. His PhD (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain) focused on the determinants and course of subjective wellbeing in older adults.
Email: t.t.morris@ucl.ac.uk
Tim is a statistical epidemiologist whose research combines social and genetic data to better understand how health and social factors are formed and transmitted from parents to children. He is involved in work to increase the availability and use of genetic data across the CLS studies.
Tim has over 10 years’ experience in epidemiology, social science and genetics. He obtained his PhD from the University of Bristol and has worked across academia, the Government Office for Science and the charitable sector.
Phone: 020 7612 6288
Email: vanessa.moulton@ucl.ac.uk
Vanessa is a psychologist, with a strong interest in multidisciplinary social science. Her research interests include using longitudinal and secondary data analysis to examine the influence of the earlier life course on children’s and adult mental health, cognitive, educational and socio-economic outcomes. In addition, Vanessa co-coordinates the CLS cohort training workshops and webinars.
Saul is a Senior Research Fellow working with Professor Felix Tropf. He is working on diverse projects at CLS, researching sociogenomics and machine learning. Saul obtained a PhD in medical science, before working on plant science and genomics, remote sensing, and AI in the Australian government and the Australian National University, then moving to demography at Oxford.
Phone: 020 7612 6646
Email: m.narayanan@ucl.ac.uk
Martina contributes to several CLS research projects. At the moment, her main responsibilities cover the data preparation, analysis, and dissemination of findings for the “What Works for Wellbeing” and the “Using New Technologies for Qualitative Data” research programmes.
Martina’s general research interests include mental health and wellbeing over the life course, intergenerational associations and longitudinal data analysis.
Maria conducts quantitative analysis using the Millennium Cohort Study to research adults who undergo Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) to conceive, and children who are born after MAR.
Phone: 020 7612 6882
Email: sam.parsons@ucl.ac.uk
Sam has a long history of producing research based on the British Birth Cohorts, from the antecedents and consequences of poor basic skills in adult life, to more recent research focusing on poorer outcomes for children with Special Education Needs, the gendered occupational occupations of teenagers and the long-term advantages for men and women who attended a private school and/or an elite university.
Phone: 020 7612 6051
Email: p.patalay@ucl.ac.uk
Praveetha’s main areas of research interest relate to investigating the development and antecedents of mental health (both ill-health and wellbeing) and their consequences through the lifecourse.
Email: a.pelikh@ucl.ac.uk
Alina is a demographer working on the European Research Council Grant to study the effects of Medically Assisted Reproduction on children, adults and parents. Her research interests include life course, families and fertility, transition to adulthood, social inequalities, social policy, and residential mobility.
Alina previously worked for Understanding Society at the Institute for Economic and Social Research (ISER) at the University of Essex. Her projects included investigating mothers’ and fathers’ employment trajectories in the UK and exploring the impact of childcare prices on women’s labour market outcomes. In her PhD, Alina investigated how various life course trajectories of young people in the UK have changed across cohorts.
Phone: 020 7612 6107
Email: g.ploubidis@ucl.ac.uk
George is Professor of Population Health and Statistics at the UCL Social Research Institute and currently holds the posts of Principal Investigator of the National Child Development Study and 1970 British Cohort Study at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Prior to joining UCL he held posts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Cambridge. George is a multidisciplinary quantitative social scientist and a longitudinal population surveys methodologist. His main research interests relate to socioeconomic and demographic determinants of health over the life course and the mechanisms that underlie generational differences in health and mortality. His methodological work in longitudinal surveys focusses on applications for handling missing data, causal inference and measurement error.
Email: a.raybould@ucl.ac.uk
Alyce joined CLS in 2021 and works on the development of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility study. The study aims to test the feasibility of a new UK-wide birth cohort, collecting information on the babies’ development and their families.
Prior to joining CLS, Alyce completed her PhD in Demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research interests include family demography, how to measure reproductive decision-making and longitudinal methodologies.
Phone: 020 7911 5370
Email: carole.sanchez@ucl.ac.uk
Carole joined CLS in 2018 as a Research Associate (Survey Manager) working on the National Child Development Study (NCDS). Carole’s main responsibility will be questionnaire development.
Carole has worked for CLS previously as a Survey Manager on the Next Steps study. Carole’s experience also includes working as an Associate Director at BMRB Social Research (now Kantar Public) and Research Manager at CFE Research.
Carole has a BA Hons in Psychology/Sociology.
Email: Laura.sheppard@ucl.ac.uk
Laura is a postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Dr Felix Tropf on the FINDME project on missing heritability. Her specific role examines environmental and genetic factors that predict inequalities in educational attainment. She joined CLS in April 2024. Her general research interests involve using quantitative methods to examine social inequalities such as UK food bank use and gendered dynamics within higher education. Laura has a BSc in Geography and an MRes in Advanced Quantitative Methods from the University of Bristol. Laura completed her PhD in 2024 at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL. Her PhD focused on gender and higher education inequalities using data science and quantitative geography.
Phone: 0203 108 8333
Email: R.Silverwood@ucl.ac.uk
Richard is Associate Professor of Statistics and currently holds the post of Chief Statistician at CLS. Richard’s applied work is mainly in non-communicable disease epidemiology and health behaviours, while his methodological interests cover missing data, the analysis of linked administrative data, and causal inference. At CLS, Richard makes major contributions to the Applied Statistical Methods and Survey Methods programmes, in addition to contributing to the work of maintaining, developing and promoting the CLS cohort studies, and advising on other statistical matters.
Phone: 020 7612 6661
Email: alice.sullivan@ucl.ac.uk
Alice’s research interests are focussed on social and educational inequalities and the intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage.
Email: Evangeline.tabor.18@ucl.ac.uk
Evangeline is a Research Fellow looking at evidencing research impact, influence, and engagement in the CLS cohort studies. Evangeline recently completed a PhD at UCL looking at LGBTQ+ health inequalities over the lifecourse. They have a Masters in Biosocial Medical Anthropology from UCL.
Email: k.tsigaridis@ucl.ac.uk
Konstantinos joined CLS in January 2024 as a Research Fellow and works on the development of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility study. The study aims to test the feasibility of a new UK-wide birth cohort, collecting information on the babies’ development and their families. He completed his PhD in Education at the University of Cambridge. He has worked in private education for over 10 years, holding teaching and leadership roles. His research interests include the applications of cognitive psychology in science education and the promotion of adolescent well-being.
Phone: 020 7612 6419
Email: a.villadsen@ucl.ac.uk
Aase’s role involves analysis of data from the Millennium Cohort Study.
She is especially interested in family and parental influences on longitudinal child psychopathology.
Phone: 020 7612 6771
Email: erica.wong@ucl.ac.uk
Erica is a Survey Manager primarily working on the National Childhood Development Study (NCDS). Prior to joining CLS, Erica taught sociology and conducted research on survey incentives, the intersection of race and religion, and health.
Email: liam.wright@ucl.ac.uk
Liam is a post-doctoral researcher using CLS’s genetic data to explore social inequalities in health and changes in inequality through time. He is also involved in work to quality control CLS genetic data, working with colleagues at UCL and the University of Bristol.
Liam has over five years’ experience of research in public health, having previously worked as a researcher at UCL and the University of Sheffield and having completed a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL in 2021.
Email: Fang-wei.wu.15@ucl.ac.uk
Alison is a research fellow working for Next Steps cohort study. She explores diverse topics, including the employment history, correlates mental ill health and mental health measurement synchronisation.
Alison’s research focused on young people’s mental health, social withdrawal behaviours and the experiences of the global pandemic among minoritized ethnic groups. She received her Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and her PhD in psychology at King’s College London. She then worked as a research fellow for a NIHR-funded project CICADA at SRI IOE UCL.
Doctoral Candidates supervised by CLS researchers.
The survey team is responsible for designing each study survey and working with the field work agencies to collect survey data from cohort members.
Email: t.adali@ucl.ac.uk
Tugba started working at CLS in 2021 as a survey manager in the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities (COSMO) Project, a new cohort study to investigate how the pandemic affects socio-economic inequalities in life chances.
Tugba holds a PhD in demography from the Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies in Turkey. She worked there as an assistant professor teaching courses on survey statistics and methodology, and took part in Turkey Demographic and Health Surveys.
Phone: 020 7911 5325
Email: matt.brown@ucl.ac.uk
Matt is a Senior Survey Manager for our NCDS and BCS70 cohort studies. Matt’s role involves being responsible for the day-to-day management of these studies, designing and developing data collection strategies and questionnaires, and working with fieldwork contractors to ensure successful delivery of the projects.
His research interests are in survey methodology, particularly in relation to the design and implementation of longitudinal surveys.
Phone: 020 7911 5510
Email: l.calderwood@ucl.ac.uk
Lisa is a Professor of Survey Research. She has over 20 years’ experience of the design and implementation of complex, large scale longitudinal surveys.
Her research areas include non-response, innovations in participant engagement, new technologies and mixed-modes of data collection, administrative data linkage and integrating bio-measures in social surveys. Lisa has strong national and international networks within the cohort studies community, is a co-ordinator for the cohort network of Society of Lifecourse and Longitudinal Studies and is involved in the European-wide COORDINATE and GUIDE initiatives.
Phone: 020 7612 6042
Email: l.garcez@ucl.ac.uk
Email: l.pople@ucl.ac.uk
Larissa joined CLS in 2022 as a Research Fellow (Survey Manager) working on the Millennium Cohort Study.
Larissa has 20 years’ experience working in academic and voluntary sector organisations. In 2022, she completed her PhD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, where she also taught statistics modules in the Sociology department and conducted training on Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Prior to this, Larissa worked as a Senior Researcher at The Children’s Society, The Police Foundation and UNICEF UK. Her main research interests are childhood socioeconomic disadvantage, family and peer relationship quality, and children’s well-being.
Email: a.raybould@ucl.ac.uk
Alyce joined CLS in 2021 and works on the development of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility study. The study aims to test the feasibility of a new UK-wide birth cohort, collecting information on the babies’ development and their families.
Prior to joining CLS, Alyce completed her PhD in Demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research interests include family demography, how to measure reproductive decision-making and longitudinal methodologies.
Phone: 020 7911 5370
Email: carole.sanchez@ucl.ac.uk
Carole joined CLS in 2018 as a Research Associate (Survey Manager) working on the National Child Development Study (NCDS). Carole’s main responsibility will be questionnaire development.
Carole has worked for CLS previously as a Survey Manager on the Next Steps study. Carole’s experience also includes working as an Associate Director at BMRB Social Research (now Kantar Public) and Research Manager at CFE Research.
Carole has a BA Hons in Psychology/Sociology.
Phone: 020 7612 6771
Email: erica.wong@ucl.ac.uk
Erica is a Survey Manager primarily working on the National Childhood Development Study (NCDS). Prior to joining CLS, Erica taught sociology and conducted research on survey incentives, the intersection of race and religion, and health.
We host a number of visiting researchers who are working towards a graduate or postgraduate degree at another institution. They use CLS study data in either their own research projects or in collaborative projects with other CLS researchers.
Phone: 020 7331 5229
Email: j.chanfreau@ucl.ac.uk
Jenny works on an ESRC-funded project that focuses on the characteristics, circumstances and outcomes of ‘only children’ over the life course, involving analysis of four UK birth cohorts. Jenny’s main areas of research interest include gender, family demography and inequalities in paid and unpaid work over the life-course.
Jenny holds a PhD from the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and an MSc in social policy research, also from the LSE. Prior to her PhD, Jenny worked as a researcher at NatCen Social Research.
Phone: n/a
Email: s.dex@ucl.ac.uk
Shirley Dex is now Emeritus Professor of Longitudinal Social Research in Education.
She joined the Institute of Education in 2002. Previously, she has held posts at the Judge Business School (University of Cambridge), the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) (University of Essex), and the Economics Department at the University of Keele. She also acted as an advisor to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Work and Family Life Programme from 1998 to 2004.
She has published, authored and edited books on the Millennium Cohort Study, and papers on analyses of women’s employment using NCDS data. She has also published many articles on flexible working, cross national comparisons of women’s employment, labour market behaviour, household employment, flexible working arrangements in organizations, equal opportunities, work and care, family policy and research methods. Much of her research work has involved the analyses of longitudinal data. She has successfully carried out research and consultancy for government departments, voluntary bodies, international agencies, EU commissions, equality commissions, the ESRC, charities, research foundations and a range of private UK organizations.
Shirley is continuing to work at the Institute of Education in the Department for Education-funded Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre, as well as being involved in research in the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, primarily on research methods. She is also on a government Taskforce, led by ONS, to devise measures of subjective wellbeing for children and young people.
Email: l.gambaro@ucl.ac.uk
Ludovica worked in CLS from 2013 to 2016, mainly on the Millennium Cohort Study and she continues to collaborate with researchers in CLS.
Her main areas of interest are inequalities in child development, early childhood education and care services, residential mobility.
Email: michelle.kelly@inserm.fr
Michelle Kelly-Irving is an INSERM researcher (CR1) in the field of life course epidemiology, and has been working in France since 2007. She has previously worked at the University of Bristol and obtained her PhD in epidemiology from the University of London (Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of education). She studied anthropology at the University of Durham as an undergraduate.
The focus of her research is on the mechanisms and processes involved in the production of health inequalities across the life course. Notably she has been developing a program of research on health outcomes and health trajectories that are driven by social and psychosocial mechanisms from early life onwards. She is interested in how social and psychosocial processes are measured and can be used in relation to biomarkers and measures of physiological systems using longitudinal data.
Further information on Michelle can be obtained from the INSERM website or her Google Scholar page.
Email: m.lennon@ucl.ac.uk
Mary Clare Lennon is a professor at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York (CUNY) in the PhD Program in Sociology and DPH Program in Public Health. She has recently been granted an award from the National Centre for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to analyze data from a US birth cohort study, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, and is working with Prof. Heather Joshi to develop a comparative study of the US and UK, using Fragile Families and the Millennium Cohort Study to investigate childhood residential mobility. Funding for this collaboration has been received from the ESCR/SSRC Collaborative Visiting Fellowship Program.
Email: j.maggs@ucl.ac.uk
Jennifer Maggs is Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the Prevention Research Centre for the Promotion of Human Development, Pennsylvania State University, in the US.
Jennifer is working on the “prevalence predictors and consequences of alcohol use from childhood to midlife” project funded by the National Institute of Health, USA. She will be working with Prof. Lucinda Platt and the MCS team to include additional measures of alcohol attitudes and use in the MCS fifth survey, and will be participating in the Consultations on MCS6 on 7th October at the Institute.
More information about Jennifer can be obtained from the Penn State University website.
Email: ellen.thompson@ucl.ac.uk
Email: n.tzavidis@ucl.ac.uk
Nikos Tzavidis left CLS in September 2007 to work as Lecturer in Social Statistics in the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research at the University of Manchester. In September 2010, he moved to the University of Southampton where he currently works as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences.
Nikos still maintains links with CLS and QSS (Department for Quantitative Social Sciences) mainly through his involvment in the ESRC Admin Node project, and through collaborative work with other CLS senior researchers.
Further information on Nikos can be obtained from the University of Southampton website.
Phone: 020 7911 5411
Email: d.wiggins@ucl.ac.uk
Dick’s current research interests include the impact of fee-pay schooling on adult outcomes and voting, the measurement of subjective well-being (https://casp19.com) as well as patterns of consent in response to requests to link survey and administrative data.
He is committed to the value of life course research and methodological rigour notably, strategies to handling missing data, structural equation modelling and data visualization.
Email: afshin.zilanawala@ucl.ac.uk
Find the latest developments and insights from across all our longitudinal studies.
The CLS Bibliography is a searchable database of published work based on our cohort studies. Search by keyword, author, date range and journal.
Data from our studies are mainly available through the UK Data Service. We run training to support researchers who are interested in using our studies in their work.
Centre for Longitudinal Studies
UCL Social Research Institute
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Email: clsdata@ucl.ac.uk
