COVID-19
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 is Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, leading the work of the Centre, with a particular focus on its scientific direction and external engagement. Alissa is also Co-Director of the new Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study, with overall responsibility for its scientific design and delivery, and is on the leadership team of the new Children of the 2020s Study.
Alissa is an economist whose main research interests relate to inequality, poverty, education policy, and the intergenerational transmission of income and well-being. In her previous employment, she served as deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
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 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.
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. As PI of Next Steps (2013-2021), she secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and led its successful re-start, including major survey sweeps at Age 25 in 2016 and upcoming Age 32 in 2022. As Senior Survey Manager (2007-2021), she has made a major contribution to the scientific content of the CLS studies and overseen all aspects of survey design and implementation on around 14 major data collection sweeps. Lisa has strong national and international networks within the cohort studies community, is a member of the CLOSER Leadership Team, 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 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 Research Director and 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.
Our administration team supports the management of the centre as a whole. This includes matters concerning HR and recruitment, and finance.
Email: l.hockley@ucl.ac.uk
Lucy joined the CLS Administration team in 2018.
Email: l.pollock@ucl.ac.uk
Louise is seconded on 0.6 FTE, from VP Education and Student Experience Office, where she has worked on various strategic projects over the last 18 months.
Throughout her time with CLS, she will work on the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study (ELC-FS).
For the remaining 0.4 FTE, she will continue her work with the Vice Provost’s office, on various projects including the UCL Introductory Programme.
Louise has over 11 years’ experience in working within HE, across various UCL academic and central services teams within programme co-ordinator and project management roles.
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.
Phone: 020 7331 5212
Email: geeting.wong@ucl.ac.uk
Geeting’s role involves providing administrative and organisational support for the Director of CLS, and other members of the team as required.
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 6025
Email: lucy.feldman@ucl.ac.uk
Lucy joined the Centre for Longitudinal Studies in March 2020. As a member of the Cohort Maintenance Team she is involved in the management of the study contact details databases and provision of data to support the work of CLS.
Lucy previously worked as a Data Developer & Reporting Insight analyst at the General Pharmaceutical Council.
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: 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.
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: j.goy@ucl.ac.uk
Justine provides general support for all communication projects, including corporate communications channels and events, and is responsible for driving participant engagement. She has experience in marketing, communications and events in France, the UK and the US, for educational and cultural institutions as well as the publishing sector.
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 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.
The data 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’s main responsibility is to manage the data of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The specific tasks vary from handling the data with different types of software to preparing guides for the data users and responding to users’ data queries about the MCS.
Phone: 020 7612 6066
Email: a.ari@ucl.ac.uk
Abdullahi works with the Senior Data Manager, his line manager, mainly in; managing and documenting CLS data enquiries, recording and reporting on deposited CLS data, assisting in preparation of the ‘feed-forward’ data, and providing user support and assistance in data sharing, data cleaning, and documentation.
Phone: 020 7612 5357
Email: utnvdch@ucl.ac.uk
Since 2013, David has worked across all four studies managed at CLS, with particular responsibility for the geographic aspects of the cohorts, and he has worked with many researchers to produce derived datasets (e.g. air pollution, access to green space and housing market variables linked to the cohort studies). He also tracks usage of the data offered through the UK Data Service as part of our reporting requirements to funders.
Phone: 020 7911 5348
Email: maggie.hancock@ucl.ac.uk
Maggie is responsible for managing research data for the National Child Development Study, including supporting data collection before, during and after fieldwork processes, preparing research data for deposit at the UK Data Service, creating value added histories datasets and providing advice on the use of the deposited data.
Email: sarah.kerry.15@ucl.ac.uk
Sarah joined the CLS Data Management team as a Research Data Manager. Sarah previously worked in the Population Health Research Institute at St George’s University of London, both as a researcher and as a data manager on a variety of national and international projects.
Phone: 020 7612 6914
Email: andrew.peters@ucl.ac.uk
Andrew works across all four studies at CLS, and is responsible for the data documentation of questionnaires.
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
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: Matthew.sparks.15@ucl.ac.uk
Matthew is a member of the research data team working on data management projects across the CLS cohorts. He works primarily in geographical and meta data. Prior to working at CLS, Matthew was an experimental PhD researcher at UCL. He is well versed in python and has experience in the management of experimental data, physical measurements and paradata.
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.
In her legacy data role, Karen leads on records management and legacy data programmes. In her records linkage role, she is involved with the planning and management of the CLS record linkage programme.
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: a.adamecz-volgyi@ucl.ac.uk
Anna is a labour economist interested in education, fertility and labour market policy. She work on the project ‘First in Family’, higher education choices and labour market outcomes that looks at young people going to university for the first time in their families.
Phone: 020 7911 5426
Email: david.bann@ucl.ac.uk
David is an epidemiologist with broad interests in population health, and particular interests in health inequalities, obesity and physical activity levels.
David contributes to the scientific development of the 1958 British birth cohort study (National Child Development Study) by planning future data collections, preparing funding applications, and helping to maximise its scientific potential.
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.
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 7612 6901
John is currently an Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences in Education. Prior to this, he was Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies from 1998-2003, leading the Centre’s work on the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70).
Previous posts in the Institute of Education include Director of the Bedford Group for Lifecourse and Statistical Studies; Executive Director of the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, and first Director of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC).
Research interests include: basic skills, economic and political socialisation, social exclusion and comparative and longitudinal research.
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. As PI of Next Steps (2013-2021), she secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and led its successful re-start, including major survey sweeps at Age 25 in 2016 and upcoming Age 32 in 2022. As Senior Survey Manager (2007-2021), she has made a major contribution to the scientific content of the CLS studies and overseen all aspects of survey design and implementation on around 14 major data collection sweeps. Lisa has strong national and international networks within the cohort studies community, is a member of the CLOSER Leadership Team, 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 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.
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: 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.
Phone: 020 7911 5469
Email: emily.gilbert@ucl.ac.uk
Emily joined CLS in October 2013 as a Survey Manager, and works primarily on the Millennium Cohort Study and 1970 British Cohort Study. Her responsibilities include various aspects of survey design, development, and monitoring.
Emily’s research interests relate to survey methodology, particularly attitude measurement and data quality, as well as survey implementation and innovative data collection techniques.
Phone: 020 3108 9868
Email: a.goisis@ucl.ac.uk
Alice 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 on two projects: a European Research Council Starting Grant to study the effects of Medically Assisted Reproduction on children, adults and parents and an ESRC New Investigator Grant to study only children in the UK.
Areas of expertise: family demography; child well-being; medically assisted reproduction; parental age.
Phone: 020 7612 6231
Email: alissa.goodman@ucl.ac.uk
Alissa is Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, leading the work of the Centre, with a particular focus on its scientific direction and external engagement. Alissa is also Co-Director of the new Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study, with overall responsibility for its scientific design and delivery, and is on the leadership team of the new Children of the 2020s Study.
Alissa is an economist whose main research interests relate to inequality, poverty, education policy, and the intergenerational transmission of income and well-being. In her previous employment, she served as deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
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: Dorottya.lantos@ucl.ac.uk
Dorottya is a Research Fellow currently working in the Millennium Cohort Study’s Measurement Lab at CLS. Her work primarily focuses on identifying, adapting, and validating psychometric measurements whilst preparing for future data collection waves with the Cohort.
Dorottya received her PhD in Psychology from Goldsmiths, University of London and her MSc in Research Methods in Psychology from UCL. Her previous work focused primarily on social and political psychology and social neuroscience.
Email: nicolas.libuy.16@ucl.ac.uk
Nicolás is a research fellow working on a broad range of topics focusing on public health, education, labour and socio-economic conditions. His research uses administrative data linked with longitudinal studies to explore causal associations over the life course.
Nicolás has over five years’ experience developing national cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. He holds a PhD(c) in Social Science from UCL Social Research Institute, MRes in Economics from UCL, and an MSc in Economics from the University of Chile. Previous joining CLS, he worked in the ECHILD study at UCL.
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: 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.
Phone: 020 7612 6288
Email: vanessa.moulton@ucl.ac.uk
Vanessa is currently working on the initial findings for the most recent age 14 sweep of the Millennium Cohort Study. She also works on the CLS Cross-Cohort Research Program (CCRP) investigating social mobility, focusing on parental wealth on children’s development and school curriculum on educational transitions. In addition, Vanessa co-coordinates the CLS cohort workshops and webinars.
Her research interests include using longitudinal and secondary data analysis to examine early life course on children’s and adult mental health, educational and socio-economic outcomes.
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 7911 5427
Email: d.peycheva@ucl.ac.uk
Darina assists in the various aspects of the development and implementation of Next Steps. This primarily involves fieldwork management and liaison with the fieldwork contractor. She also helps with the administrative records linkage applications for the four CLS cohort studies and liaises with a number of government departments and non-governmental bodies.
Darina’s research interests relate to survey methodology and the aspects of survey process quality, as well as social epidemiology and the life course approach to health.
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 Research Director and 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: n.rajah@ucl.ac.uk
Nasir is a Research Fellow working with Dr Richard Silverwood and Professor Emla Fitzsimons on the analysis of linked administrative and birth cohort study data.
Nasir completed his PhD at the University of Leeds, investigating the socioeconomic effects of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in the British Cohort Study.
After this, Nasir was a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the Academic Unit of Health Economics at the University of Leeds. There, Nasir investigated the economics effects of arthritis in three population representative UK datasets.
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: 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 6538
Email: k.c.smith@ucl.ac.uk
Kate is part of the survey team responsible for the design, development and implementation of the Millennium Cohort Study. She has been survey manager of the Millennium Cohort Study since its start in 2000. She has worked on all of the surveys that CLS is responsible for including the most recent studies of BCS70 and Next Steps.
Her research interests are in survey methodology.
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: ellen.thompson@ucl.ac.uk
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 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.
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.
Phone: 020 7612 6705
Email: afshin.zilanawala@ucl.ac.uk
Afshin is a family and social demographer. Her research investigates how the social and economic context of families, as well as the race and gender of individuals, lead to inequalities across childhood and adolescence.
Currently, her work examines the role of nonstandard work schedules on children’s health and development and parent’s wellbeing in the US and UK, work that has been funded by ESRC and the Institute of Education.
In her podcast, A Life’s Work, Afshin explores the latest evidence on shift work and how it affects family life and the health and wellbeing of mothers, fathers, and children.
Prior to joining CLS, Afshin was an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University and has worked at the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL.
Our doctoral candidates are supervised by CLS researchers and use the study data in research for their PhD.
Email: Dawid.gondek.14@ucl.ac.uk
Dawid joined CLS in November 2016 as a PhD Candidate, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
His research is focused on longitudinal and cross-cohort trends in mental and physical health outcomes. He is using data from the British birth cohort studies, mainly the National Child Development Study and the British Cohort Study in his PhD.
Prior to joining us, Dawid completed and MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences at UCL and worked on research related to mental health provision among young people and in migrant population.
Phone: N/A
Email: s.tsoli@ucl.ac.uk
Stergiani is a PhD student in Social Epidemiology at the Centre for Longitudinal studies, holding an ESRC studentship for her doctoral studies.
Her main areas of interest are broadly on social and structural determinants of population health and health disparities.
More specifically her work examines the longitudinal impact of social capital on mortality and physical and mental health outcomes (using health biomarkers). For her PhD research, she will be using longitudinal data mainly from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the British Cohort Study (BCS), with special interest to the Biomedical and Death datasets of NCDS.
For her research she makes use of advanced statistical methods.
Stergiani has a BSc in Environmental Science (2014) from University of the Aegean, Greece and a MPhil in Public Health (2015) from University of Cambridge, UK.
Her supervisors while at CLS are Professors George Ploubidis and Alice Sullivan.
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. As PI of Next Steps (2013-2021), she secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and led its successful re-start, including major survey sweeps at Age 25 in 2016 and upcoming Age 32 in 2022. As Senior Survey Manager (2007-2021), she has made a major contribution to the scientific content of the CLS studies and overseen all aspects of survey design and implementation on around 14 major data collection sweeps. Lisa has strong national and international networks within the cohort studies community, is a member of the CLOSER Leadership Team, 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 7911 5469
Email: emily.gilbert@ucl.ac.uk
Emily joined CLS in October 2013 as a Survey Manager, and works primarily on the Millennium Cohort Study and 1970 British Cohort Study. Her responsibilities include various aspects of survey design, development, and monitoring.
Emily’s research interests relate to survey methodology, particularly attitude measurement and data quality, as well as survey implementation and innovative data collection techniques.
Phone: 020 7612 6042
Email: l.garcez@ucl.ac.uk
Email: s.mesplie-cowan@ucl.ac.uk
Sierra joined the Survey team in August 2018.
Phone: 020 7911 5427
Email: d.peycheva@ucl.ac.uk
Darina assists in the various aspects of the development and implementation of Next Steps. This primarily involves fieldwork management and liaison with the fieldwork contractor. She also helps with the administrative records linkage applications for the four CLS cohort studies and liaises with a number of government departments and non-governmental bodies.
Darina’s research interests relate to survey methodology and the aspects of survey process quality, as well as social epidemiology and the life course approach to health.
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 6538
Email: k.c.smith@ucl.ac.uk
Kate is part of the survey team responsible for the design, development and implementation of the Millennium Cohort Study. She has been survey manager of the Millennium Cohort Study since its start in 2000. She has worked on all of the surveys that CLS is responsible for including the most recent studies of BCS70 and Next Steps.
Her research interests are in survey methodology.
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.
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: 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.
The full research paper is available to read on the British Educational Research Journal @BERANews website: https://t.co/Rafc0glo9f
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Our 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.
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Email: clsfeedback@ucl.ac.uk
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