 | Professor Fiona A Steele
Professor of Social Statistics, University of Bristol (S4) The development and application of statistical methods for the analysis of longitudinal data, including multilevel event history models and simultaneous equation models; applications in demography and education
Born in Cheshire, I attended secondary school in Aberdeen where I became interested in mathematics and the humanities. I went on to study mathematics and statistics at the University of Edinburgh, but my continuing interest in the social sciences guided my subsequent decision to study social statistics at the University of Southampton, where I completed my Master's and Doctoral degrees. While at Southampton, I developed interests in multilevel modelling, longitudinal data analysis and demography, areas which I continue to work in today. The direction my research and teaching careers took was inspired by Ian Diamond, my PhD supervisor, who involved me in a range of research projects. He also instilled in me the importance of presenting complex statistical models in an accessible way, with compelling examples of the substantive insights they can reveal, if they are to be adopted by social scientists. After completing my PhD, I worked as Lecturer in Statistics and Research Methods at the London School of Economics, before moving to the Institute of Education to join the Centre for Multilevel Modelling. The Centre relocated to the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol in 2005 where I became Reader in Social Statistics and then Professor in 2008. The move to Bristol has invigorated the team, providing a supportive and friendly environment with opportunities for collaborations across the social sciences, and beyond to social medicine and veterinary science. For me, the main attraction of a career in social statistics is its variety. Social science research is methodologically challenging, driven by an ever-changing array of important and interesting research questions, and we have many rich longitudinal data sources to work with. I have had the fortune to collaborate with some outstanding demographers and economists on projects ranging from studies of child and women’s reproductive health in developing countries, the impact of women’s participation in credit programmes in Bangladesh, to research on the relationship between childbearing and partnership dissolution in Britain, and on the impact of school resources on pupil attainment in England and Wales. Through my research, I have also tried to promote the use of advanced statistical methods which, when applied to high quality longitudinal data, can better approximate the complexity of social processes. My election as a Fellow of the British Academy is a great honour: as a statistician, it means a great deal to me that my contribution to social science has been recognised. My leisure interests include running (I am currently training for my second Bristol Half Marathon), walking and cinema. I also, very occasionally these days, play the piano and classical guitar. |
