Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

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20122024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Area of academic expertise - outline

My research examines a number of interrelated topics concerning the nonprofit/charity sector: funding sources and networks; measuring and modelling organisational and financial risk; evaluating regulatory interventions; and estimating geographical distribution of charitable activity. I have methodological and teaching interests in the use of administrative data, quantitative methods and computational social science.

I am a visiting researcher at the Gradel Institute of Charity in New College, Oxford; and Associate Director for Advanced Methods at the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. I serve on the advisory board of the ERC funded research project "Beyond the breadline: Charitable food provision and survival strategies of the urban poor in a comparative perspective".

Current research activities

I am currently a Co-Investigator on the ESRC project: Improving Access to and Use of Organisation-Level Data on the Third Sector and Civil Society. This project will create the first national database on the population of organisations forming the third sector in the UK.

I am a visiting researcher at the Gradel Institute of Charity at New College, Oxford, where I collaborate with international colleagues on a number of projects:

  • Who serves first? The role of experience and connections in volunteering as a trustee for new charities
  • Declines by birth cohort in volunteering as a charitable trustee: analysis of large-scale longitudinal data for England and Wales
  • Charity begins and ends at home? Trends in the allocation and withdrawal of cross-border philanthropy

This work uses large-scale, regulatory data in combination with longitdudinal and machine learning analysis techniques to generate novel insights on the activities of charitable organisations.

Current PhD students:

  • Olalekan Oyedepo - Charitable food aid and growing inequalities in the UK

Current teaching activities and interests

I currently teach quantitative and qualitative research methods modules at L8 and L9 of our undergraduate programme. 

I teach introductory and advanced courses on computational social science for PhD students through the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. I have been commissioned to deliver and develop training courses for the National Centre for Research Methods, Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, and Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data. 

Other areas of expertise available for knowledge exchange

I have worked on large-scale impact evaluations of government funding programmes, including the £75mn Community Cost of Living Fund, helping Government and funders understand the effectiveness of their work.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 2 - Zero Hunger
  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

External positions

Scotland Advisory Board, Carers Trust

1 Apr 2025 → …

Trustee, Voluntary Sector Studies Network

30 Nov 20202023

Keywords

  • HA Statistics
  • Statistical analysis
  • Statistics Teaching

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