Dr Pallavi Banerjee is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, a UKRI policy fellow and ADR UK fellow. She is a quantitative education researcher specialising in large-scale linked administrative, longitudinal and survey data, her work generates robust evidence on educational inequalities and the factors shaping children and young people’s attainment, experiences and longer-term outcomes. Her research sits at the intersection of education, social policy and public services, with a particular focus on disadvantage, vulnerability, school belonging and inclusion. 

She currently leads research using linked administrative data from the Department for Education and Ministry of Justice to investigate how disadvantage accumulates across children and young people’s educational trajectories and their interactions with wider public services, with the aim of identifying where evidence can inform policy and intervention.

Alongside her research, as an ADR UK Ambassador Pallavi plays a leading role in strengthening the use and impact of administrative data. She chairs ADR UK’s Educational Inequalities and Policy Evaluation Community (EIPEC) and directs the Inequalities Action Lab (IAL), bringing together researchers, policymakers and practitioners to build collaborations, develop research capacity and accelerate the translation of rigorous evidence into policy and practice. Across these roles, her work is driven by a clear ambition: to harness the power of linked data to understand inequality, identify opportunities for change and improve outcomes for children and young people.