Centre for Longitudinal Studies

Maggie Hancock joined CLS in February 2006 to work on data management and initial data analysis of NCDS, BCS70 and MCS data.  Previously Maggie was involved in the VITAE project at the Institute of Education as well as research into the format of the maths GCSE, interactive whiteboard use and music GCSE takeup.

The completion of an MRes (masters in educational and social research) at the Institute of Education, enables Maggie to understand the data from the research perspective and complements her experience in data management software such as the SIR database package.

For further information and details of Maggie's publications please see the IoE Website (link).

Kirstine Hansen joined CLS in July 2003. Since January 2005 she has been Research Director of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). Her principle duty is to supervise research using the MCS and to ensure that the MCS data are well used for scientific and teaching purposes. Kirstine was conferred the title of Reader in Social Policy in July 2012.

Kirstine's current research interests include: childcare, child development, child cognitive development and academic achievement; school choice; life course trajectories of disadvantaged children and crime.  Before joining CLS she had a lectureship in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. Prior to this she worked as a Researcher at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics.

Details of Kirstine's research, teaching activities and publications are available on the IoE website (link).

Jon Johnson

Senior Database Manager

Room number:

102

Tel:

020 7612 6571

Email:

j.johnson@ioe.ac.uk

Jon joined CLS as its Senior Database Manager in May 2003 and heads up the survey database team which consists of Rachel Rosenberg, Maggie Hancock and Claude Gierl.  His main areas of responsibility are in maintaining and improving the quality and accessibility of the three cohort datasets and providing support to researchers and collaborators on data provision.

He sits on the Technical Advisory group for the Access Committee for CLS Cohorts and the Understanding Society Data Access Committee.

He is also co-investigator on the Millennium Cohort Study (Sweep 6).

He has previously worked as a senior developer in software houses in the insurance and banking sector and in the civil service and has a degree in plant biology from North East London Polytechnic. Currently Vice-President of the IOE branch of UCU and Treasurer of the UK SIR User Group.

For more information on Jon's professional activities and publications, see.

Elizabeth Jones

Research Officer

Room number:

321

Tel:

020 7911 5566

Email:

e.jones@ioe.ac.uk

Liz joined CLS in May 2007. She is a Research Officer on the Millennium Cohort Study. Her current research topics include childcare, parenting, and children’s behavioural development.

Heather Joshi

Emeritus Professor, Professor of Economic and Developmental Demography

Room number:

G15

Tel:

020 7612 6874

Email:

h.joshi@ioe.ac.uk

Heather is an Emeritus Professor of Economic and Developmental Demography at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. She was previously the Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies from 2003 to 2010, and its Deputy Director from 1994. She was PI and Director of the UK Millennium Cohort Study from 2000 - 2011.

Heather is an economic demographer who has used a number of longitudinal datasets including the ONS LS. Her research has been mainly concerned with the family, the labour market, gender, child development, but also includes spatial issues. She is Co-Chair of the European Child Cohort Network fostering international collaboration and comparison between cohort studies and the founder President of the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies. Heather is a Fellow of the British Academy, and was awarded an OBE in 2002 for services to Women’s Studies.

Details of Heather's research activities and publications can be found on the IoE website (link).

Having completed his PhD and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Education, Dylan worked as a Research Officer at CLS until October 2011.  Dylan is currently working as a Senior Researcher at the International Longevity Centre, whilst continuing to be involved in a number of projects with colleagues at CLS and the Department of Quantitative Social Science (DQSS) in his role as a visiting Research Associate at CLS.

 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.

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.

John 'Mac' McDonald retired from his position as Director of Methodology for the Centre for Longitudinal Studies on 30 April 2011.  However, he continues to maintain an association with the Centre as a Visiting Professor, and may be reached at his email address shown above. 
 
Mac has been a social scientist and statistician his whole educational/professional life. He has a BA in Economics and Mathematics (double major), a MA in Demography and a PhD in Biostatistics.  Early in his career, most of his research was demographic, while his current research is mainly statistical.  This represents a shift in emphasis to concentrate on more challenging methodological problems. While much of his research has been at the interface of statistics and social science, he has also undertaken interdisciplinary research with colleagues in Computer Science, Medicine and Nursing.

Previous appointments have been Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Social Statistics at the University of Southampton (1984-2007) and a researcher at the World Fertility Survey (1980-1984).

Tarek is an economist who has been working at the Institute of Education, LLAKES research centre for the past four years. He is mainly interested in economic and social policy with a particular emphasis on the economics of education, educational inequalities, and quantitative research. His research spans several areas: Quantitative methodologies related to the use of longitudinal and multilevel data, the analyses of educational inequalities in developed OECD countries and in North Africa, and the assessment of educational performance and policy.

At CLS Tarek will be undertaking a number of tasks related to the development of methodologies adapted to the use of the different British cohort studies.

For further information you can visit Tarek's personal blog  or his page on the IoE website.

Samantha Parsons

Research Officer

Room number:

301

Tel:

020 7612 6882

Email:

s.parsons@ioe.ac.uk

My primary research interests are the antecedents and consequences of poor basic skills in adult life, which have resulted in a number of publications with Professor John Bynner. I am a member of both CLS and NRDC.

Much of my research experience has involved working with the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). I have recently been working on all stages of development of the latest 2004/5 surveys of both cohorts, which includes new literacy and numeracy assessments and exercises to capture symptoms associated with dyslexia. I am currently working on a DfES funded project ‘Illuminating Disadvantage’ which examines the life histories of the men and women assessed with Entry Level 2 literacy and numeracy skills. I am also working on an ESRC Research and Development Initiative project which will provide longitudinal teaching datasets based on the British Cohort Studies and accompanying teaching documentation for use by lecturers on undergraduate / postgraduate courses.

For details of my research activities and publications, please see the IoE website (link).

Lucinda Platt

Director and PI of the Millennium Cohort Study

Room number:

110 (Building 55, 55-59 Gordon Square)

Tel:

020 7612 6764

Email:

l.platt@ioe.ac.uk

Curriculum vitae (360186 Kb)

Lucinda is Director of the Millennium Cohort study. In this role, she aims to ensure that the study provides a high quality scientific resource for researchers and analysts, and that it is well-known and used throughout policy and research communities. She also liaises closely with funders of the study.

Her main research interests focus on ethnicity, migration, comparisons across ethnic groups, and child poverty, with a particular interest in longitudinal approaches. As co-investigator on the study, she leads the ethnicity strand for Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study.

For more about Lucinda, visit the IOE website.

Ian Plewis

Visiting Professor

Room number:

Tel:

Email:

ian.plewis@manchester.ac.uk

Ian Plewis left CLS in September 2007 to become Professor of Social Statistics in the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research at the University of Manchester.

He still maintains links with CLS, notably as Principal Investigator of a project funded by ESRC under their Survey Design and Measurement Initiative.  This project – Predicting and Preventing Non-Response in Cohort Studies – focuses on the Millennium Cohort Study and is being carried out with colleagues from CLS (Lisa Calderwood) and NatCen (Rebecca Taylor). He is also a consultant on another project funded under this ESRC initiative and run by Longview  – Solving the Problem of Attrition in Longitudinal Surveys.

Meghan Rainsberry

Communications Manager

Room number:

101

Tel:

0207 612 6530

Email:

M.Rainsberry@ioe.ac.uk

Curriculum vitae (37937 Kb)

Meghan Rainsberry joined the Centre for Longitudinal Studies communications team as Publications and Web Officer (0.5 FTE) on 1st April 2011.

Meghan is responsible for helping to produce feedback leaflets for cohort members and their families, and the CLS newsletter, Kohort. She writes news items for the CLS website, maintains the content of the website and liaises with its designers (Nemisys) to ensure that it continues to meet the Centre’s needs. She is also involved in drafting press releases and fielding enquiries from journalists and is responsible for proof-reading and editing CLS reports and documents.

Rachel Rosenberg

Research-Data Manager

Room number:

G03

Tel:

020 7911 5357

Email:

r.rosenberg@ioe.ac.uk

Rachel joined CLS in March 2006 to work on the NCDS, BCS70 and MCS data. Her main responsibilities include preparation and maintenance of datasets, consistency checking and data editing, documentation and analysis.

Publications

DEX, S. and ROSENBERG, R. (2008) Ethnic minorities and non-response in the Millennium Cohort Study.  CLS Working Paper 2008/11. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies

HOCKLEY, C., QUIGLEY, M., JOHNSON, J., ROSENBERG, R., DEZATEUX, C. and JOSHI, H. (2007) MCS Birth Registration and Hospital Episodes Statistics Linkage: A Guide to the Dataset.   London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies

Previous Experience

Her previous positions include over two years carrying out technical support and software training (STATISTICA suite of analytical tools, including Data Miner and Text Miner) at StatSoft Ltd, Bedford, and two and a half years as an actuarial consultant for Watson Wyatt Partners Ltd, London. She obtained an honours degree in Mathematics and Statistics from Edinburgh University in 1997.

Rachel has also spent three years in Italy where she worked as an English teacher to adults and children, and translated technical documents and brochures.

Gemma joined the Department of Quantitative Social Science on 1st May 2013 as the Project Manager for the Uniform Search Platform element of the CLOSER (Cohorts and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resource) project.  She is also responsible for enhancing legacy data resources within CLS in response to user needs.

Previously, Gemma worked at the University of Hertfordshire, managing the JISC funded Course Data project and managing and analysing quality related data.

Peter Shepherd

Senior Director of the Cohort Studies Resource

Room number:

209

Tel:

020 7612 6864

Email:

p.shepherd@ioe.ac.uk

Has been working with the Birth Cohort Studies since NCDS were 23 and the survey was run from the National Children’s Bureau. Since then he has been involved, from City University in the design, management and dissemination of BCS70 as well as NCDS, and from the IoE has also played a key role in the MCS, NCDS Biomedical teams and the recent surveys of NCDS and BCS70. He is a co-holder of the ESRC Resource Centre grant.

As Director of Survey Operations for all three studies, he takes the lead in overseeing of cohort member relations, cohort maintenance and tracing, fieldwork contracts, data security and paper archives. Peter’s first degree is in geography and he has previous experience of working in a business school. He is the author of much of the documentation of cohort study datasets available on this site and from the UK Data Archive.

Since 2000 Kate has been the survey manager for the ESRC Millennium Cohort Study, a new longitudinal birth cohort study following the lives of nearly 19,000 babies born in the UK during 2000-2001. The study is now currently carrying out the fourth survey of the children at age 7.

Prior to this she was a principle member of the team that carried out the 1999/2000 surveys for the 1958 (NCDS) and 1970 (BCS70) British Cohort Studies. Since joining CLS (formerly SSRU) in 1989 to work on the 5th sweep of NCDS, she has gained extensive experience of collecting and analysing longitudinal data in both the 1958 & 1970 cohorts. Research projects have included analysing housing and family data from both cohorts.

Kate has also worked at the Family Policy Studies Centre analysing data from the 1985 and 1995 BSAS sweeps for a study of family and kinship. Before joining SSRU, she carried out research on employment and economic issues for the Planning Department at the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

Alice Sullivan

Director and PI of BCS70

Room number:

G09

Tel:

020 7612 6661

Email:

a.sullivan@ioe.ac.uk

Alice leads the team responsible for developing the content, design and analysis of the 1970 British Cohort Study.  Her research interests are focussed on social and educational inequalities, including inequalities of social class, gender and ethnicity. Her published work includes papers on Bourdieu and cultural capital, rational choice theory, private and state schooling, single-sex and co-educational schooling, and education policy.  She is interested in longitudinal research methods, the design of survey instruments, and mixed-methods approaches.

Details of Alice's research activites and publications can be found on the IoE Website (link).

Dr. Chris Taylor is a senior lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University.  He has an ESRC mid-career fellowship to use MCS data about education in Wales and is being mentored by Prof. Heather Joshi.

Originally a Geographer, Chris is also interested in looking at neighbourhood effects across the UK.  In a related project he is responsible for the evaluation of the Foundation Stage in Wales.

More information about Chris can be obtained from the Cardiff University website.