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Staff Profile

Staff Profile

Dr Helen Wareham

Research Associate

  • Email: helen.wareham@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences,
    Newcastle University,
    King George VI Building,
    Queen Victoria Road,
    Newcastle upon Tyne,
    NE1 7RU
Background

Helen is a Research Associate working on the SEED project (Social InEquality and its Effects on child Development: A study of birth cohorts in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands). The project is funded by the Norface network (https://www.norface.net/).

The project utilises existing birth cohort and longitudinal data about young people and their families, in the UK we are predominantly using data from the Millennium Cohort Study. The aim is to explore the impact of socio-economic factors on a child in the early years of their life, and how these change over time.

Helen has a diverse educational and employment background.  She initially studied psychology and sport science at Liverpool Hope University, trained as a teacher in post-compulsory education, and worked at Northumbria University as a researcher on a national alcohol study funded by the AERC, before being awarded a PhD studentship.  

Based within FUSE, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, her studentship was funded by the ESRC as part of an e-health initiative to utilise national datasets and develop secondary data analysis methods. Helen’s PhD was focused on exploring socio-economic factors and measures of inequality that may affect cancer diagnosis in primary care.

Following her PhD Helen moved into education research, working at the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM), based at Durham University as a data analyst on a wide range of social mobility focused projects funded by the Sutton Trust, the Education Endowment Foundation, The Wolfson Foundation, and the Institute of Physics.

Prior to joining Newcastle University in February 2018 Helen was the Monitoring Evaluation Officer for the Study Higher NCOP (National Collaborative Outreach Programme) based at Oxford Brookes University.

Helen also works as a Researcher for The Bridge Group, a social mobility charity, and has conducted research exploring social inequalities and diversity within organisations such as, the Cabinet Office, Wellcome Trust, and leading accountancy firms.

For more information (qualifications, research experience, and a broader publications list) please click here for ResearchGate profile.

Research

My work is generally focused on the use of large datasets, secondary data analysis, and the areas of social inequalities and social justice.  This has been applied to both health and education settings.

I have used a number of large and national datasets for research, ranging from publicly available data; national general practice profiles, department for education school level data, and office for national statistics data. Specialist Higher education data from UCAS and HESA. I have experience of requesting and accessing sensitive data, having worked with data from the National Pupil Data and cancer registry. I have completed the ONS Safe Researcher Training.

Through my work with the Bridge Group I have worked with a range of organisational data, often workforce and diversity data, which can be presented in a range of formats. As such I often take a pragmatic approach to working with data, and enjoy finding ways to work with a wide range of data and processes.

Publications