Office for National Statistics Research Excellence Series 2025
Throughout 2025
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Research Excellence Series is a yearly programme of virtual talks showcasing exceptional projects using secure data. This year's series includes the winners from the ONS Research Excellence Awards 2024, which celebrated innovative research, impactful collaboration, and methodological best practice - many of whom include ADR UK-funded researchers and projects.
Each session explores the journey of a unique research project – from inception and methodology to dissemination and real-world impact. The series features speakers from across the research community, offering a chance to hear directly from researchers about the data, the discoveries and the difference their work makes.
Read more about each event and sign up below.
Upcoming events
Insights from linked data: School performance and criminal justice
Thursday 8 May, 10:30-11:30
In this talk, Dr Alice Wickersham will showcase work undertaken as part of her ADR UK Research Fellowship. She will introduce linked data from England’s Department for Education (DfE) and Ministry of Justice (MoJ), and show how this data facilitates important research into school performance and criminal justice. She will consider implications for the wider research and policy landscape, drawing on other work she has undertaken in the field of mental health, and the importance of public engagement in this research.
Taming the DRAGoN: Building bridges to secure data access and collaboration
Tuesday 3 June, 10:30–11:30
DRAGoN is a multi-disciplinary research group. They aim to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, think-tanks, industry and government. They will help improve tools, operations and skills in relation to output checking in trusted research environments.
Exploring the relationship between work and health using linked data
Thursday 10 July, 10:30 to 11:30
Daniel Ayoubkhani will be talking about quantifying the impact of various health conditions and interventions on labour market outcomes, using a new data asset for England.
Understanding parole success following release from prison
Thursday 28 August, 10:30 to 11:30
Dr Tim McSweeney will be talking about research funded by the Dawes Trust and undertaken in partnership with the Prison Reform Trust. This study describes the parole cohort and the extent and nature of post-release rates of recall, custodial reconviction, and serious further offending by parolees and other prisoners in England and Wales between 2011 and 2021.
Early adult outcomes for suspended and excluded pupils
Thursday 11 September, 10:30 to 11:30
This talk explores the long-term outcomes for pupils in England who experience suspensions during secondary school. The research comes from the team at the Education Policy Institute (EPI). It demonstrates that young people who are suspended during secondary school, experience a range of poorer outcomes in late adolescence and early adulthood, compared with their peers.
Ethnic inequalities in the criminal justice system
Thursday 23 October, 10:30 to 11:30
This talk will discuss findings examining the extent and drivers of ethnic inequalities in the criminal justice system drawing on criminal justice datasets developed through Data First, a pioneering data-linking programme led by the Ministry of Justice and funded by ADR UK.
Mind the gap: Gender, care experience and youth justice involvement in England
Thursday 20 November, 10:30 to 11:30
This project uses newly linked administrative datasets from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education to explore how children who have been in and out of home care and children from racially minoritised backgrounds are disproportionately drawn into the youth justice system in England.
Immigration, geographic mobility, and social mobility: Insights from administrative data
Thursday 30 January 2025, 10:30-11:30
The ONS Research Excellence Series 2025 will kick off with presentations by Research Fellows from ADR UK. Collectively they will share insights from their research using the ADR England flagship datasets. This will explore diverse themes such as immigration, geographic mobility, and social mobility.
ECHILD: Linking longitudinal data from health, education and social care to create a national resource for research in children and families
Thursday 27 February, 10:30-11:30
ECHILD is linking longitudinal data from health, education and social care to create a national resource for research in children and families.
How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time?
Thursday 20 March, 10:30-11:30
This team's work built a new toolbox of high-frequency linked microdata to estimate firm responses to economic shocks in near real-time.
Virus Watch - understanding community incidence, symptom profiles and transmission of COVID-19 in relation to population movement and behaviour
Thursday 3 April, 10:30-11:30
This team's work led to the creation of a new linked dataset in 2020. It provides evidence on which public health approaches are most effective in reducing transmission. It also investigates community incidence, symptoms, and transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in relation to population movement and behaviours.
