2010 Statistics User Forum conference speakers' biographies

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Charlie Bean

Charles Bean (MA, Cambridge; PhD, MIT) is Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy at the Bank of England, having previously been Chief Economist at the Bank, and before that Professor of Economics and Head of Department at the London School of Economics (until September 2000).  He has published widely, in both professional journals and more popular media, on European unemployment, on European Monetary Union, and on macroeconomics more generally.  He has served on the boards of several academic journals, and was Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies (1986-90).  He has also served in a variety of public policy roles, including:  as consultant to HM Treasury;  as special adviser to both the Treasury Committee and the House of Commons, and the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (Labour Group) of the European Parliament;  and as special adviser on the House of Lords enquiry into the European Central Bank.

Michael Blastland

Michael Blastland is a writer and broadcaster. Now freelance, he was for 17 years a BBC journalist. An English graduate, he is co-author of The Tiger that Isn't, about interpreting statistics in the news; creator of 'More or Less' on Radio 4; a presenter of 'Analysis', also on Radio 4; and writes a column about all things numerical for BBC Online. He also teaches numeracy to journalists and has advised and presented widely on data analysis and communication.

Andrew Dilnot

Andrew Dilnot has been Principal of St Hugh's College since October 2002 and Pro Vice Chancellor of Oxford University since 2005. He is an economist and broadcaster. He went to a comprehensive school in Swansea, and then after a PPE degree in Oxford worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.He was Director of the Institute from 1991 to 2002. He was the founding presenter of BBC Radio 4's series on the beauty of numbers, More or Less, and presents television documentaries about the economy for Channel 4. He is the chairman of the Statistics User Forum of the Royal Statistical Society. He has served on the Social Security Advisory Committee, the National Consumer Council, the Retirement Income Inquiry, the Balance of Central and Local Funding Inquiry, the Rowntree Committee on the future costs of long term care, the Ageing Population Foresight panel, and the Councils of the Royal Economic Society and Queen Mary and Westfield College. He is an Honorary Fellow of St John's College Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, the Swansea Institute of Higher Education and the Institute of Actuaries, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from City University.

Ian Diamond

Professor Ian Diamond was appointed Principal and Vice-Chancellor on 1 April 2010.  He was previously Chief Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (a position he continued to hold and devote 20% of his time to until 30 June 2010). He was also Chair of the Research Councils UK Executive Group (2004-2009) the umbrella body that represents all seven UK Research Councils.   Before joining the ESRC Professor Diamond was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Southampton.

Professor Diamond graduated in1975 with a BSc (Econ) Honours from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) followed in 1976 with an MSc Statistics also from the LSE. He then received his PhD in Statistics from the University of St Andrews in 1981. He began his academic career at Heriot Watt University in 1979 before joining the University of Southampton in 1980 where he was a lecturer, senior lecturer and Professor before being appointed Dean of Social Sciences in 1997 and then Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 2001.

A social statistician, Professor Diamond's work has crossed many disciplinary boundaries, most notably working in the area of population but also in health, both in the developed and less developed world, in environmental noise and with local authorities. His research has involved collaboration with many government departments including the Office for National Statistics, the Department for International Development, the Department of Transport and the Department for Work and Pensions.

Professor Diamond is Chair of the Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales and a trustee of the World Wildlife Fund UK. He is a member of the Universities UK Research Policy Committee, Chair of the Universities UK Group on Efficiency, a member of the Scottish Science Advisory Council and a Board Member of the British Universities and Colleges Sport organisation. Professor Diamond was elected to the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 1999, is a Fellow of the British Academy (2005), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2009) and holds honorary degrees from the universities of Cardiff and Glasgow.

Danny Dorling

Danny Dorling is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He went to various schools in Oxford and University in Newcastle upon Tyne. He has worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand. With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. His recent books include (in 2010), "Injustice: why social inequalities persist". He is a member of the World Health Organization's Scientific Resource Group on Health Equity Analysis and Research.

Carl Emmerson

Carl Emmerson is Acting Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and programme director of their work on pensions, saving and public finances. He is an editor of the annual IFS Green Budget. His recent research includes analysis of the impact of the financial crisis and association recession, and the Government's response, on the UK's public finances. He has examined the effect of UK pension reforms on the public finances, retirement behaviour, labour market mobility, incentives to save and inequality, and has evaluated the large scale pilots of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the Pathways-to-Work reforms to incapacity benefits and the Saving Gateway matched savings vehicle. He has previously served as a specialist advisor to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee.

John Fisher

John is Director of the Local Futures Group. He worked in economic development and regeneration for many years, with local authorities and regional development agencies in the North of England, before joining the Henley Centre for Forecasting, where he established the successful Planning for Local Change programme.

John established the Local Futures Group in 1997. Comprising a team of researchers and consultants their aim is to provide a geographical perspective on economic, social and environmental change, and to introduce this perspective into public policy nationally and locally. Local Futures provides a range of services for use by researchers and policymakers, ranging from benchmarking to strategy development and monitoring.

John has also played a central role in developing of the company's Local Knowledge on-line service. Used by local authorities and their partners across Britain, it provides a comprehensive evidence base, for a wide range of research and policy applications. Local Knowledge now includes the Output Area Classification, for the first time allowing the interactive analysis of the make-up of communities across Britain.

Alastair Hatchett

Alastair Hatchett is Head of Pay and HR Services at IDS, having been the editor of the IDS Pay Report for 20 years until 2005. He leads several teams of researchers whose work on pay and HR studies is highly respected and widely quoted in management, union and government circles. He has been involved in a range of research projects over the past decade for the Low Pay Commission, the Pay Review Bodies, the CIPD, the EOC, Government Departments and a range of unions. He is a regular conference speaker on reward issues, the labour market and employment trends. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Statistical Society.

Jamie Jenkins

Jamie began his career in the Office for National Statistics working on earnings estimates before continuing his life in the Civil Service at the Welsh Assembly Government. There he was responsible for supporting policy colleagues on migration and population issues before moving on to the Ministry of Defence and Dasa. After a short spell there he rejoined ONS and was part of the team that relocated labour market statistics, a division he continues to work in today.

Stephen Penneck

Stephen Penneck joined the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 1997 and became Director General in 2009. He has wide experience as a government statistician, initially in economic statistics, and more lately heading the Surveys and Administrative Sources Directorate.

Prior to becoming Director General, Stephen had responsibility for methodological advice to the ONS and the Government Statistical Service (GSS), including advice to the National Statistician on quality, standards, best practice, surveys, administrative sources, analysis and the Census.

As Director of Surveys and Administrative Sources, he had responsibility for all ONS surveys and for their outputs, including the Consumer Price Index, the Labour Force Survey, and business surveys feeding the National Accounts. Previously, Stephen provided policy advice to the former National Statistician, Len Cook and, in 2002, he completed a five-month secondment to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Suren Thiru

Suren is a frequent spokesman for Lloyds Banking Group on housing market issues and the Halifax House Price Index. The Halifax House Price Index is the UK's longest running monthly house price series with data covering the whole country from 1983. He is also a regular commentator on other issues relating to trends and developments in personal finance. Suren joined HBOS (now part of Lloyds Banking Group) in August 2007. Prior to joining HBOS, Suren worked as a market economist at Leaseplan UK for 4 years.