Professor Denise Lievesley, a social statistician by training, is the Head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s College London a position she took up in October 2008.  She holds a chair in Social Statistics.  Leading up to joining King’s College London she was special advisor at the African Centre for Statistics of the UN based in Addis Ababa. 

 

Denise was, until July 2007, the founding Chief Executive of the English Information Centre for Health and Social Care.  Formerly she was Director of Statistics at UNESCO for seven years where she established its new Institute for Statistics. 

 

Denise began her career as an official statistician specialising in survey sampling and subsequently conducting research on non-response and on panel surveys at SCPR (now the National Centre for Social Research).  Later she was the Director of the UK Data Archive as well as Professor of Research Methods in the Mathematics Department at Essex University.

 

She has an honorary doctorate from City University in London and is a fellow of University College London.  She has held visiting professorial positions at City University, the University of Durham and INRS in Montreal in Canada.

 

Denise is very active in relevant professional associations:

She was President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1999 to 2001.  She is currently President of the International Statistical Institute a position she will hold until August 2009 and the first woman to hold this office.  She has been the President of the International Association for Official Statistics, and was the international representative on the Board of the American Statistical Association for three years to the end of 2007. 

 

Denise chairs the methodology committee of the European Social Survey and remains active in the development of social research methods and in research ethics.  She is a Trustee of the National Centre for Social Research, a member of the Executive Board of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences. Denise is chair of the newly formed European Statistics Advisory Committee.