People

Matthew provides strategic direction as Director of both the UK Data Service and the UK Data Archive, based at the University of Essex. He has practical and theoretical experience in all aspects of social science and humanities data service infrastructure, having previously headed the History Data Service and served as Head of Digital Preservation and Systems at the UK Data Archive.

As director he has overall responsibility for the service strategy and key stakeholder relations. He also provides leadership in data curation, archiving and preservation activities. He was Principal Investigator for the Enhancing and Enriching Historic Census Microdata project, represents the UK on the ESFRI SCI Strategic Working Group and is a member of the UKRI’s Infrastructure Expert Group.

Oliver directs the UK Data Service team working on census data, which is spread across multiple institutions. He has extensive experience working on the delivery and analysis of census data, specialising in census origin-destination data. He is an Associate Professor in Digital Information Studies at UCL and also a Senior Advisor to the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information and User Support, which facilitates research access to the ONS Longitudinal Study, a linked sample of census data from 1971 onwards.

Neil leads the Impact team’s discovery and evidencing of the impact of research undertaken using the data in the UK Data Service collection, as well as the impact of the Service’s infrastructure. Prior to working in the impact team, Neil gained a range of experience of teaching, training, resource creation and evaluation in both the education and cultural sectors.

Gemma heads up the team dedicated to promoting the UK Data Service and supporting all communications needs. A chartered marketer since 2010, Gemma has 20 years’ international marketing experience across Health, Central Government, Higher Education, Charity and Telecommunications sectors. She is also an Associate Director of the UK Data Archive, lead partner of the UK Data Service, based at the University of Essex.

Vanessa leads the team dedicated to delivering a programme of training events, web-based training resources and online help for researchers and teachers using the data. She is an experienced social researcher who specialises in health research using cross-sectional survey data, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, a UK Data Service partner based at the University of Manchester. A researcher on large-scale national surveys at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) before joining the Service, Vanessa also teaches and supervises MSc students within the Cathie Marsh Institute.

Victoria is Director of research and innovation sector strategy at Jisc where she leads the development, promotion and embedding of Jisc’s research and innovation sector strategy within Jisc, with stakeholders such as funders and research leaders and researchers. Victoria represents Jisc and its research and innovation activity in the UK and overseas, proactively engaging and influencing funders, policy makers and other stakeholders in a way that furthers the interests of Jisc and its members. Victoria is co-investigator and deputy director of the UK Data Service. She brings expertise in research management and impact, research data management, developing open data resources and information access rights in the public sector, and also public and voluntary sector policy development.

Debora is a Professor of Social Gerontology at the University of Manchester, where she directs MICRA, the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing – part of the Cathie Marsh Institute for the application of quantitative methods in interdisciplinary social science research. President of the British Society of Gerontology and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Statistical Society, Debora has taught quantitative research methods to social scientists from undergraduate to PhD level. Her own research uses complex analysis of diverse large scale datasets to understand poverty and inequality in later life.