Our Ambassadors

Karen Broadhurst OBE

Former Co-Director of Lancaster University Data Science Institute

Professor Karen Broadhurst FAcSS is a social scientist based at Lancaster University. She is former Co-Director of the University’s Data Science Institute and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Karen specialises in family justice and collaborates with colleagues in Australia, Europe, the US and in China. As Principal Investigator, Karen has completed a number of high-profile, high-impact research projects, which have led to data-driven change in policy and practice. Research on women’s repeat involvement in public law care proceedings led to widespread service developments, turning the tide on neglect of women living apart from their children. Karen has held a number of national advisory and service positions. She served on the Academic Advisory Group the ADR UK Data First Programme led by the Ministry of Justice, and chairs the fellowship funding allocation panel attached to this programme. She also served on the Evidence Group for the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and is expert advisor to the Archbishop’s Commission on Families and Households.

Karen co-directed the Family Justice Data Partnership (a team based at Lancaster and the SAIL Databank at Swansea University) which is delivering a five year programme of analytic work to support the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. This programme of work is demonstrating the huge value of routinely produced public services data, particularly where this can be linked to health, education, crime and demographic data.

“ADR UK is leading the way nationally and internationally, in demonstrating the value of large-scale routinely produced data. Administrative data collected or produced centrally by government, the courts and other national agencies, is typically captured at the level of entire service populations, enabling research at a pace and scale which would be very difficult to achieve through other methods.”

“In the field of justice, where there is a presumption of even-handed treatment of cases, retrospective use of institutional records is a practical way of answering questions about the consistency of practice and outcomes for users - across different regions of the UK and over time.

“ADR UK’s work to build datasets that link data across government departments is a monumental step-forward. Sustained investment is needed to ensure the gains made are not lost, and to make further progress towards creating agile access to data, as close as possible to real-time operations.”

Fiona James

Chief Data Officer and Director, Data Growth and Operations, ONS

Fiona is Chief Data Officer and Director of Data Growth and Operations at the Office for National Statistics. She is an experienced digital, data, technology and policy expert with a deep understanding of the delivery challenges faced by public sector organisations.

She has a track record in leadership through complexity, projects and people in both a policy and service delivery context.

Fiona joined the Civil Service in 2006 as a generalist Fast Streamer at the Department for Transport, where she held policy, strategy and operational roles across aviation, roads and maritime.

She spent four years working on exiting the European Union, leading transport and digital, data and technology readiness at the Cabinet Office, before moving to the Crown Prosecution Service as a digital technology leader, helping to transform criminal justice during the pandemic.

"If we harness public trust in data and combine it with the rapid expansion of new data sources, timely and accurate linked data is a powerhouse of statistics and insight. The potential impact to society is massive. Not only will it help us find answers to questions we don’t already know, but it will also help us ask the right questions to understand dependencies across employment, crime, health, and climate change.

"Access to government data is crucial. ADR UK’s infrastructure of organisations and researchers enable greater insight and help create a more mutually beneficial relationship with the public and their data. Researchers and the public get a more personalised experience and in turn, that data is used for the greater good, like so many of the ADR UK-led linked data projects can already demonstrate."

Pallavi Banerjee

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education

Dr Pallavi Banerjee is an Assistant Professor in Education at the University of Cambridge and an ADR UK Ambassador. She specialises in educational inequalities, social mobility, and the use of linked administrative data and large-scale longitudinal surveys to inform policy and practice. Her research focuses on educational attainment and examines how structural, institutional, demographic, and behavioural factors shape children and young people’s life chances across the education system and beyond.

Pallavi works at the intersection of academia and government, with a strong track record of translating complex evidence into policy-relevant insights. She is currently leading an ESRC-funded project and is on secondment to the Department for Education as a UKRI Policy Fellow, where she contributes to evidence-based policymaking using linked administrative datasets. Her work draws on major data sources, including the National Pupil Database, PISA, LSYPE, and Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO), as well as cross-departmental linkages, to analyse pathways from early life experiences through education and into labour market and justice outcomes.

She is the Director and Principal Investigator of the Inequalities Action Lab at Cambridge and chairs the Education Inequalities and Policy Evaluation Community (EIPEC), advancing the use of administrative data to address inequalities. 

"Administrative data allows us to move beyond snapshots of inequality and instead understand how disadvantage unfolds across the life course. In my research, I use it to connect systems and generate evidence that is not only rigorous, but directly actionable for policy. As an ADR UK Ambassador, I am particularly committed to use these data resources, building capacity across sectors, and ensuring that research leads to meaningful change in the lives of children and young people."

Katie Hunter

Senior Lecturer in Criminology

Katie is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Her research focuses on processes of criminalisation, specifically on the relationship between experiences of state care and justice systems involvement. She is particularly interested in youth justice and racialised and gendered (in)justices.

Katie’s ADR UK Fellowship research used linked Ministry of Justice and Department for Education data to explore the intersections between ethnicity, care experience and youth justice involvement. The project was partnered with Barnardo’s who completed a complementary qualitative project with Black care-experienced young people in prison, carried out by Listen Up. Findings from the Fellowship were widely reported in the media, have been cited in the House of Lords and are feeding into both regional and national policies to prevent the criminalisation of children in care. At the ONS Research Excellence Awards 2024, Katie was awarded the Research Impact prize in recognition of this work.

Katie is also one of the co-founders of the Administrative Data for Social Policy (ADSoP) hub at MMU which brings together researchers using administrative data to explore key policy issues. 

"Administrative data offers a powerful way to challenge injustice by turning the state’s own records into quantifiable evidence of inequalities."

Vickie Barrett

Senior Lecturer in Criminology

Dr Vickie Barrett is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Deputy Director of the Crime and Policing Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield. She is also Co-Director of the Crime and Justice Administrative Data Network and an editorial board member for the British Journal of Community Justice.

Vickie has 18 years’ experience working in and undertaking research relating to the criminal justice system. A former probation officer and teacher, her research interests are shaped by her professional experience, with a particular focus on how individuals interact with the criminal justice system and other government organisations. Broadly, her research focuses on how sanctions are used within criminal justice and other public sector organisations, and the consequences these approaches have for individuals over time.

Vickie’s recent ADR UK Fellowship used the Ministry of Justice–Department for Education linked dataset to examine school pupils’ interactions with the criminal justice system specifically in relation to school exclusions. Her research used a range of school- and offence related factors to examine school exclusions and trace the offending trajectories of excluded pupils into early adulthood.

“There is a wealth of information routinely collected for operational purposes; accessing this data offers a valuable opportunity to deepen our understanding of pressing societal issues. Crucially, the ability to draw on longitudinal linked datasets—such as those combining criminal justice and education data—allows us to explore how individuals and their circumstances interact across different sectors overtime. Administrative data therefore allows us to gain clearer insights into societal issues so we can work towards reducing long term individual and societal costs.”

Aoife O'Higgins

Director of Evidence, Foundations

Aoife O’Higgins is Director of Evidence at Foundations, the National What Works Centre for Children and Families, where she leads research, evaluation, and grant‑making to strengthen evidence based support for children and families. She also contributes to teaching and academic supervision at Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention. Her work focuses on building rigorous, policy‑relevant evidence to improve outcomes for children, especially those with experience of children's services. Aoife is passionate about the potential for good data to transform the lives of children for the better.