Government Social Research
The GSR Heads of Profession consists of the nominated Heads of Profession for all GSR Full Member organisations. They meet regularly and work closely with the Head of the Government Social Research Service in delivering the GSR Strategy. The Head of Profession role is described in the leaflet, Being Head of Profession.
Paul Wiles
HM Treasury
Paul Wiles (chair)
Paul Wiles is Head of the Government Social Research Service alongside his duties at the Home Office, where he is responsible for social research, science and technology development, economic analysis and modelling and horizon scanning, and statistics. Prior to joining the Home Office he was Professor of Criminology at the University of Sheffield and formerly Dean of the Faculty of Law, and Director of the Centre for Criminology and socio-legal studies. He currently holds a visiting chair at Oxford.
Jan White
Communities and Local Government
Jan White
Jan White is head of profession and Chief Social Researcher in the Communities and Local Government. The division is responsible for delivering research and intelligence to inform the sustainable communities agenda and about homelessness and vulnerable groups.
There are just over 70 social researchers working in Communities and Local Government, some in research divisions - such as the Local and Regional Government Research Division and some in mixed policy and research divisions - such as in the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit and Social Exclusion Unit.
Jan worked briefly in the university and voluntary sectors before becoming a social researcher in government. Since joining government, she has worked on a range of policy areas including those concerned with different housing tenures, vulnerable groups, homelessness issues and establishing a major new programme - Supporting People.
She has been closely involved not just with supervising research and researchers
but also contributing to the development of policy in particular in relation
to homelessness, domestic violence tackling the housing problems of high
demand areas and the Supporting People programme.
She has been responsible for developing and supervising programmes of research
to inform policy development, implementation and evaluation. She has been
responsible for commissioning considerable programmes of both qualitative
and quantitative research, as well as the development of administrative
systems to facilitate the monitoring of policy and programmes.
Prior to becoming the acting divisional manager, she was the deputy divisional manager. During that time, she was responsible for research teams covering issues of high and low demand for housing, planning, homelessness and vulnerable groups.
Richard
Bartholomew
Department for Children, Schools and Families
Richard Bartholomew
Richard is Chief Research Officer for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Department for Children, Schools and Families commissions a wide range of policy-related research on education, lifelong learning and skills and children's services. Currently Richard is leading on research and analysis on children and families. He first joined the GSR as a Research Officer for the Manpower Services Commission to work on research into unemployment and training. He subsequently worked for the Department of Employment which, in 1995, merged with the Department for Education. Richard was also seconded to the Cabinet Office to work on the Next Steps programme, setting up executive agencies within government. He is Head of Profession for the 60 social researchers within Department for Children, Schools and Families and a former chair of the GSR heads of profession group. He is also a member of the Economic and Social Research Council's Training Board which oversees post-graduate training for social scientists in the UK. He is a graduate in sociology from the Universities of Essex and East Anglia.
John McQeeney
Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
John McQueeney
John McQueeney has been Head of Social Research in DTI since 1999. He started his research career in academia, before taking up research positions in the Tavistock Institute, Greater London Enterprise Board and the Putteridge Management Centre.
Pascoe Pleasance
Legal Services Research Centre
Pascoe Pleasence
Pascoe Pleasence B.A. (Lond.), M.Phil. (Cantab.), Dip.Law (City), Barrister, has been Head of the Legal Services Research Centre since its creation. Since leaving the Bar he has amassed more than 10 years experience of empirical social research, first at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and then in government. He maintains close links to the academic world and actively encourages academic publication and participation in academic conferences.
Ministry of Justice
Tina Golton
Tina Golton is joint Head of Research at Ministry of Justice with Chloe Chitty.
Tina worked previously in Communities and Local Government and has extensive experience as a social researcher in government, working on housing, urban regeneration and construction. More recently, she has been involved in futures and horizon-scanning research supporting an analytical change programme and managing an £11.5m p.a. research programme.
In her spare time she is a volunteer youth worker in her home town of Herne Bay, Kent.
Chloë Chitty
Chloë Chitty
Dr Chloë Chitty, Joint Head of Profession for Social Researchers in the Ministry of Justice, with Tina Golton.
After completing a Geography degree at Cambridge University and a PhD on
policing at QMW College, London University, I joined the Home Office, where
I conducted policing research. I moved to the Department for Employment and
then the Department of Social Security and worked for a time on unemployment
research. I returned to the Home Office to manage the Home Office's
research relating to corrections and sentencing and later became Assistant
Director of RDS NOMS, heading up research and statistical analysis on
corrections and sentencing. I have now moved to do this role in the
Ministry of Justice.
I am delighted to be part of GSR and to be a Head of Profession, not least because I have benefited enormously from meeting a wide variety of Social Researchers who are experts in their fields and from the networks I have built up with Social Researchers across Whitehall. As HoP, I have a real opportunity to help promote Social Researchers and the use of social research within and beyond Whitehall.
Gillian Smith
Department for Transport
Gillian Smith
Gillian has been head of social research since the Department for Transport formed in summer 2003. She has been closely involved in reviewing the way in which social research is organised and managed in DfT. She headed the team responsible for DfT's Evidence and Research Strategy, which was published in 2004, and has worked to ensure that work on the travel behaviours and attitudes of people and businesses receives due attention across DfT research programmes. Following organisational changes Gillian became head of the new Social Research and Evaluation Division in July 2004. Prior to making the journey to transport she worked as a Principal Research Officer in DETR (now Communities and Local Government on regeneration and urban policy research. Gillian was responsible for a number of key policy evaluations and research projects which impacted on major policy decisions following the 1997 General Election. She was also responsible for the new Indices of Deprivation which was published in summer 2000. Much of her early career as an RO, SRO and PRO was spent at the Department of Employment (which was since been split between DWP, DTI and Department for Children, Schools and Families) where she specialised in research on employment relations and labour market issues.
Angela Evans
Welsh Assembly Government
Angela Evans
Angela is the Welsh Assembly Government’s first ever Chief Social Research Officer. She leads the Office of the Chief Social Research Officer and acts as Head of Profession for research and evaluation staff across the Assembly Government. Angela has wide public sector research and policy development experience, having worked as a researcher with the Department of the Environment, a research/management consultant, and a senior specialist with the Audit Commission in Wales.
Janet Gawn
Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Janet Gawn
Janet Gawn is the head of Social Research at Defra. This is a newly-established post, as Defra are only just developing a social research capability. Janet is therefore currently working with other professional groups (economists, statisticians and natural scientists) to ensure that good practice is established in drawing up a social research programme. Once a sound basis has been established, she hopes to expand the social research capacity of the Department.
Social research requirements in Defra currently centre mainly on rural issues: how important are different services to rural communities? what is the best form of delivery? what is the likely impact of demographic changes? what is the impact on rural economies of the absence of affordable broadband connections? and what additional problems are faced by people living in the more remote parts of the countryside?
Janet has over 18 years of experience in government social research. She worked in a number of different departments before joining Defra, including the Home Office, the Employment Service, Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Inland Revenue.
Stephen
Creigh-Tyte
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Stephen Creigh-Tyte
Stephen Creigh-Tyte is the Chief Economist and Head of Research at DCMS.
Stephen has held a range of economist and applied research posts in Government
and academia in the UK and Australia. Before moving to DCMS he worked for
many years in the employment, industrial relations and training/development
areas.
Tricia Dodd
Office for National Statistics
Tricia Dodd
Tricia Dodd is head of profession at the Office for National Statistics. She is currently project director on the Integrated Household Survey, a new initiative to bring together a number of large-scale social surveys. She has a long career in social research, mainly in connection with social surveys. She has spent most of her career in the Office for National Statistics (and its predecessor, OPCS), and has worked on all of the large household surveys run by ONS, and has been responsible for setting up and running number of ad hoc surveys on a range of topics including housing, prisoners and tourism. She moved to the Home Office in 2003 where she worked in the crime and communities research and statistics group. She returned to ONS when the social survey area work moved to Newport, and has relocated from London to Wales.
Kevin Sweeney
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
Dr Kevin Sweeney
Kevin is Head of the Central Survey Unit within the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, a member of the Senior Management Group of the Agency and assumed the GSR HOP function for NISRA in 2002. It wasn't always that way.
Kevin took a primary degree in Psychology with the aim of becoming a clinical psychologist. A consuming interest in research diverted him into a PhD in Psychopharmacology followed by a research and teaching post in Experimental Psychology, Oxford University. Returning to Northern Ireland to take up a research fellowship at Queen's University Belfast, Kevin had his first brush with Government social research. He became involved with two major social research projects with the then Policy Planning and Research Unit (PPRU). The first was to establish the NI FES as a research resource within NI and the second to assist with the development of the first large scale general purpose social survey in NI, the Continuous Household Survey (CHS).
Kevin eventually took up a permanent post with PPRU and led the development of the Government social survey function in NI from a very small organisation associated principally with FES and CHS to what is now the Central Survey Unit (CSU) of NISRA. CSU now conducts the NI fieldwork for most UK surveys which include NI, a suite of regular NI-specific surveys and a growing portfolio of commissioned survey research for Government departments, agencies and the wider public sector in NI. Amongst a wide range of surveys, CSU now conducts a regular series of Health and Wellbeing Surveys, the Northern Ireland Crime Survey and successfully tendered for the extension of the British Household Panel Study to NI.
Picture to follow
Sandra Williams
Department of Health
Sandra Williams
Sandra Williams is Head of the Policy Research Programme (PRP) and Chief Research Officer in the Department of Health. The PRP is a national programme of research dedicated to providing an evidence base for policy making in DH. The PRP employs 8.5 research officers who are a mix of social scientists, physical scientists and clinicians. Between them, they work with policy and analytical colleagues to plan, commission and deliver a £33m annual programme of policy related research in public health, health services and social care. The PRP funds research through a number of routes: research units; strategic research initiatives of linked groups of projects; and single projects and literature reviews.
Sandra obtained a degree in Social Science and Administration and a PhD in Political Science from London University. She then lectured in social and political science before embarking on a full-time research career. She has conducted research in a number of different settings including universities, the Policy Studies Institute, and the private sector; and published on health and social care, as well as parliamentary governance.
Since joining the Research and Development Directorate in DH in 1995 Sandra has built up extensive experience of commissioning and managing research for policy makers, and working to ensure that policy-making in DH is informed by the best available evidence. She and her team in the PRP work alongside other national research programmes that are part of the NHS National Institute for Health Research (formerly NHS R&D) whose research is primarily of relevance to the NHS. The PRP also engages in cross-departmental work across shared Public Service Agreements, and has strong links with the Research Council; in particular with the MRC, ESRC, and EPSRC.
Fiona Neathey
ACAS
Fiona Neathey
Fiona Neathey joined ACAS on 8 May 2006 as temporary Head of Research and Evaluation. Fiona is on a one-year secondment from the Institute for Employment Studies where she has been leading the Institute’s work on employment relations, focusing in particular on pay and reward, equal opportunities and employment regulation. She has conducted a range of research for Government departments, NDPBs and other public sector organisations including the DTI; the Equal Opportunities Commission; the Health and Safety Executive and the Low Pay Commission. Fiona previously had several roles at Industrial Relations Services (IRS), including that of manager of the external research unit. Prior to joining IRS she was Research Officer at CPSA (now PCS), and before that she was a research assistant in the Business school at Wolverhampton Polytechnic (now university).
Fiona has an MA in Industrial Relations from the University of Warwick and a B.Sc in Sociology from the University of Bath.
Over the coming months important elements of Fiona’s work will be to build the research team at ACAS and to work with other team members on the continuing development of economic impact measures in respect of ACAS’ activities.
Lesley Duff
National Police Improvement Agency
Lesley Duff
Dr Lesley Duff is Head of Profession for RDS-linked social researchers in the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).
The NPIA is a new agency that aims to support policing to improve and deliver better services to the public. The Research, Analysis and Information unit is a team of social researchers, statisticians, analysts and library staff that provide information, assessed intelligence and research-based knowledge about policing needed for strategic and operational decision making.
After completing a Psychology degree at London University, Lesley trained as a nurse and worked with people with spinal injuries. An interest in quality of life and its improvement led her to complete a masters degree in Social Anthropology and a PhD in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Lesley worked in a research and development role in the Royal College of Nursing’s quality improvement programme for 10 years before joining the Home Office (HO).
Lesley’s first HO post was setting up a programme of research for the National Asylum Support Service within the Immigration and Nationality Department, as an outpost of the Immigration Research and Statistics Service. She continued to work on immigration issues until moving to a Programme Director role in 2005, managing research on policing and organised crime within the Crime Reduction and Community Safety Group of the Home Office. Lesley became the Head of NPIA Research, Analysis and Information in March 2007 and is working with the team and with the support of the GSRU, to set up and develop the new function.
Paul McCafferty
HM Revenue and Customs
Paul McCafferty
Start date 20th August 2007
Previously, I was the Head of Local and Regional Governance Research Unit in the Department for Communities and Local Government. The unit has responsibility for the delivery of research support on all matters relating to local and regional government and governance to CLG and, more widely, OGDs, with an annual research budget of £2.5m. One of the main cross-Whitehall responsibilities of the unit is to deliver the triennial surveys of public attitudes to local government and its services in England. These take place in all 388 principal LAs and generate an aggregate national sample of approximately 560,000 respondents in each round of the surveys which date back to 2000/01.
I have been a researcher in Government for 20+ years covering a range of different policy areas, including specialised housing for older and disabled people, urban and rural physical, economic and social regeneration of run down areas and, latterly, local and regional government and governance in England. Most of my main published research outputs relate to the housing needs of older and disabled people and other specialised types of housing. I am currently undertaking - and, hopefully, shortly completing - the GSR MSc in Policy Analysis and Evaluation.
Prior to joining the civil service, I worked on inner-city local authority housing estates in Birmingham helping to implement a safer neighbourhoods scheme for residents and local agencies.
Jane Barrett
Food Standards Agency
Jane Barrett
In July 2007 I took up the position of Head of Social Science Research at the Food Standards Agency and also became the Head of Profession for Social Research. This is a new post and initally my role will be to review how social research can best add value to the Agency's existing evidence base and to set up a Social Science Research Committee to help shape and prioritise what new social research is carried out. The Agency is particularly interested in behaviour change and building the evidence to find out what works to encourage people to choose healthier diets. Food labelling and how consumers make use of the range of information found on packs is another key area.
Before starting at the Food Standards Agency I was a researcher in DWP for eleven years. Here I worked in a range of policy areas and carried out research to help inform the welfare to work agenda for two of the Department's key client groups - lone parents and disabled people. During my time at DWP I had the opportunity of a secondment to the Cabinet Office working on the first ever women only citizens' juries and a secondment to HM Treasury working on a CSR07 policy review of mental health and employment outcomes.
Prior to becoming a Government Social Researcher I worked at Plymouth University, lecturing in social policy and research methods and completing a PhD about the development of citizenship rights in the European Union.
Diana Wilkinson
Scottish Executive
Diana Wilkinson
Diana is Chief Researcher at the Scottish Executive, based in Edinburgh. She is Head of Profession for over 80 social researchers working within all the main SE policy areas. Her own office provides research support to central functions including Strategy and Delivery, Communications and Corporate Services.
Diana has had a long term career in Social Research in the Executive, most recently heading an analytical unit supporting policy on Children, Young People and Social Care. Prior to that she worked in a range of research areas including housing and regeneration, and transport and road safety. Diana is currently a member of the Scottish Funding Council’s Strategic Research Development Grant Panel and the Education Sub-Panel for RAE 2008. She is a graduate in geography from Queen Mary College, University of London.
Jenny Dibden
Department for Work and Pensions
Jenny Dibden
Jenny Dibden joined the Employment Department as a specialist Research Officer in 1988 after completing degrees in government at the London School of Economics. For the next decade she held various research posts in the Employment Department, Employment Service and Department for Social Security as well as a period of time working on market testing. Jenny has helped to construct the current evidence base of the Department through major evaluations of JSA, early policies to introduce a work focus to clients on 'inactive' benefits and evaluation of all the New Deals. In addition Jenny has been responsible for the wider research programmes of BA, ES and Jobcentre Plus, official statistics on New Deal and vacancies and also analysis of ES and Jobcentre Plus performance against targets. Jenny is currently a Deputy Director in the Department for Work and Pensions and head of Provision Delivery and Performance Division. The Division is part of the newly created Delivery Directorate and gives Jenny responsibility for the delivery of all DWP contracted employment provision including ESF co-financing. In addition Jenny is Head of Profession for Social Research in the Department. DWP has 100 RO - Grade 6 researchers (plus one SCS researcher, Jenny) spread across the organisation.
Health and Safety Executive
David Riley
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