British Academy Fellowship for University of Southampton statistician

Professor Chris Skinner, a statistician based in the University of Southampton's School of Social Sciences, has been made a Fellow of the British Academy in recognition of the excellence of his research work and activities.

His election is announced today (2 July) following the British Academy's annual general meeting yesterday. The Academy is the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences and elects just 35 fellows each year. There are some 750 fellows in total who are elected for distinction and achievement in one or more branches of the academic disciplines that make up the humanities and social sciences.

Professor Skinner is a leading social statistician, whose principal scholarly contributions have been in the methodology of the efficient design of sample surveys; the construction of models for the estimation of disclosure risk for large scale censuses and surveys; and the use of modelling techniques for the analysis
of complex survey designs, especially involving longitudinal data.

Talking about his election to the Academy, Professor Skinner commented: "I'm delighted to receive this distinction from the Academy. It's a huge honour to be given such a prestigious accolade and to receive recognition for work which has benefited enormously from collaboration with colleagues at Southampton."

Professor Skinner graduated with a first class honours degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University, and went on to gain an MSc in Statistics at the London School of Economics, before coming to Southampton in 1978 to study for his PhD in social statistics and take up a temporary lectureship. He has been in Southampton ever since, becoming a professor in 1994.

His research interests include the methodology of government statistics and statistical modelling in the social sciences. Chris is currently working on major research projects funded by the European Union, the Office for National Statistics, and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Since 2001, he has been Director of the Economic and Social Research Council's Centre for Applied Social Surveys and, more recently, has become Director of its new interdisciplinary National Centre for Research Methods.

Professor Grayham Mizon, Head of the University's School of Social Sciences, commented:" Chris is an internationally renowned statistician, who led the successful bid for the Economic and Social Research Council's National Centre for Research Methods, and is Director of the European Science Foundation Programme in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences. It is good to see his many achievements recognised in this way, and it is excellent news for the University, the School of Social Sciences and the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute."