1. Introduction

Each year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Secure Research Service (SRS and Integrated Data Service (IDS) User Engagement Team organise a wide range of events. These are curated specifically for the research community and bring together researchers, data owners, government representatives and policy makers.  

Our events include our annual in-person Research Capability conference, the Research Excellence Series of talks and online events focussed on key updates to our services.   

The upcoming schedule is detailed below, and you can book directly through this page. 

We will keep you updated through our monthly newsletter and other communications. If you are not on our mailing list, please contact us

We look forward to you joining us for an exciting year of interesting and informative events.

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2. Research Excellence Series 2025

Research Excellence Series

Each year, the ONS organises a collection of online research events called the Research Excellence Series. The series showcases exceptional research projects that use a diverse wealth of invaluable research data. These data are used by researchers to produce new insights, inform change and make a difference in people's lives. 

Each session will delve into the story of a unique research project. From inception to methodology, dissemination and impact. These sessions will be hosted by an eclectic range of speakers from across the research community. 

If you missed any sessions from the 2024 series, you can catch up by visiting the ADR UK YouTube Channel, where all past talks are available for viewing.

Research Excellence Series Talks 2025 

This year's series will include the winners from the ONS Research Excellence Awards 2024. 

The awards recognise the excellent and innovative analyses carried out and promote best practice research methodologies and data matching or linking. The awards promote greater awareness and understanding of the data made available and the public good achieved from statistical analyses of the data. 

Find out more about the Research Excellence Awards 2024

Join us for our popular series and have the chance to get closer to researchers and their inspiring projects, through our virtual events.

January

For our first talk, we were delighted to welcome three ADR UK Research Fellows who shared insights from their research using ADR England flagship datasets.

Virtual Event

Immigration, Geographic Mobility, and Social Mobility: Insights from Administrative Data

Who

Dr Ezgi Kaya (Cardiff University), Xiaowei Xu (Institute for Fiscal Studies) and Dr Francesca Foliano (UCL Social Research Institute)

If you missed this talk it can be found on the ADR UK YouTube Channel.

February

We are pleased to welcome the ECHILD project team, winners of the ONS Research Excellence Award - Secure Data Creation Award.

The ECHILD project has enabled linkage of multi-agency data to provide a more holistic understanding of children's lives and how they interact with services spanning health, education and social care. 

Virtual Event  

ECHILD: Linking longitudinal data from health, education and social care to create a national resource for research in children and families

Who 

Professor Katie Harron (University College London (UCL), Great Ormond Street (GOS) Institute of Child Health) 

March

For this month's talk we are delighted to welcome the winners of the ONS Research Excellence Award - Impact of Analysis Award – Collaboration with Government.

This team's work built a new toolbox, of high-frequency linked microdata, to estimate firm responses to economic shocks in near real-time. 

Virtual Event 

How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time?

Who 

Christina Palmou (Office for National Statistics)

When 

Thursday 20 March - 10:30 to 11:30 

Where 

MS Teams

Book your place

April

We are pleased to welcome the Virus Watch project team, winners of the ONS Research Excellence Award - People's Choice Award.

Their 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.

Virtual Event

Virus Watch - understanding community incidence, symptom profiles and transmission of COVID-19 in relation to population movement and behaviour

Who

Vincent Nguyen (UCL Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health)
Dr Sarah Beale (Institute of Health Informatics, University College, London)

When

Thursday 3 April – 10:30 to 11:30

Where

MS Teams

Book your place

May

For this month’s talk we are delighted to welcome the winning commendation in the 2024 ONS Research Excellence Awards for work on Insights from linked education and justice data: Educational attainment and criminal offending.

In this talk, Dr Alice Wickersham will showcase work undertaken as part of a Research Fellowship funded by Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK). She will introduce linked data from England’s Department for Education (DfE) and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and show how these data facilitate important research into school performance and criminal justice.

Virtual Event

Insights from linked data: School performance and criminal justice

Who

Dr Alice Wickersham (Kings College London)

When

Thursday 8 May – 10:30 to 11:30

Where

MS Teams

Book your place

June 

For this month's talk we are delighted to welcome the DRAGoN Team, from the University of the West of England Bristol (UWE). They were the winners of the ONS Research Excellence Award - Organisational Excellence Award.

This 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. 

Virtual Event  

Taming the DRAGoN: Building Bridges to Secure Data Access and Collaboration

Who 

Damian Whittard and Elizabeth Green (UWE) 

When 

Tuesday 3 June - 10:30 to 11:30 

Where 

MS Teams

Book your place

July

For this month’s talk we are delighted to welcome the keynotes from the ONS Research Excellence Award 2024.

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.

Virtual Event

Exploring the relationship between work and health using linked data

Who

Daniel Ayoubkhani (Office for National Statistics)

When

Thursday 10 July – 10:30 to 11:30

Where

MS Teams

Book your place

August

For this month’s talk we are delighted to welcome Dr Tim McSweeney Dawes Chair of Public Protection

Tim will be talking about the 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.

Virtual Event

Understanding parole success following release from prison

Who

Dr Tim McSweeney (Dawes Chair of Public Protection)

When

Thursday 28 August – 10:30 to 11:30

Where

MS Teams

Book your place

September 

For this month's talk we are delighted to welcome the first of our joint winners for the ONS Research Excellence Award - Impact of Analysis Award.  

This 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. 

Virtual Event  

Early adult outcomes for suspended and excluded pupils

Who 

Allen Joseph and Whitney Crenna-Jennings (Inequalities and Wellbeing team at EPI)

When 

Thursday 11 September - 10:30 to 11:30 

Where 

MS Teams

Book your place

October

We are pleased to welcome the winner of the ONS Research Excellence Award - ADR UK Research Excellence Award.

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.

Virtual Event

Ethnic Inequalities in Sentencing: Evidence from the Crown Court in England and Wales

Who

Dr Kitty Lymperopoulou (University of Plymouth)

When

Thursday 23 October – 10:30 to 11:30

Where

MS Teams

Book your place

November

For this month’s talk we are delighted to welcome the second of our joint winners for the ONS Research Excellence Award - Impact of Analysis Award.

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.

Virtual Event

Mind The Gap: Gender, care experience and Youth Justice involvement in England

Who

Dr Katie Hunter (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Dr Claire Fitzpatrick (Lancaster University)

When

Thursday 20 November – 10:30 to 11:30

Where

MS Teams

Book your place

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3. Integrated Data Service

We are committed to providing up-to-date information on the Integrated Data Service (IDS). We have provided a dedicated section on the ONS website to support users with regular updates.

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4. More information

If you have any questions about research events at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), please email srs.engagement.team@ons.gov.uk.

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