Our Staff

Q-Step Director

School of Social & Political Sciences Lecturer

Dr Niccole Pamphilis

Niccole earned her PhD in Political Science from Michigan State University in 2012 with a focus on comparative politics and research methods.  In addition to being a lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, Niccole serves as an instructor at Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research's Summer Program in Quantitative Research Methods housed at the University of Michigan, a world leading training program.  Her past and current research has focused around government outputs and the resulting policy variation, while a new research project tracking public opinion in Greece is ongoing.

Skill set

  • Basic/Intermediate Statistics
  • Linear Regression
  • Limited and Categorical Dependent Variable Regression Count Modelling (Basic) Time Series (Basic) Survival Analysis/Duration Modelling (Basic) Scaling
  • Software: Stata (expert), R (intermediate)

Q-Step Founding Director

Dr Jo Ferrie

Jo has been based at the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research at the University of Glasgow since 2001. She completed her PhD in 2008 and has worked on over a dozen research projects all examining the barriers faced by disabled people with a focus on barriers that are socially constructed.  Jo was appointed as a Lecturer in Social Research Methods in the School of Social and Political Sciences in 2012 and developed the undergraduate Honours programme in quantitative research methods.  She is a co-convenor of the Equality and Diversity cluster of the Glasgow Human Rights Network (since 2011) and a member of the Scottish Human Rights Commission's Research Advisory Group (since 2012).  In 2013 Jo was appointed as the interim Director of Graduate Research Training for the College of Social Sciences' Graduate School and began working with the ESRC's Scottish Doctoral Training Centre on advanced training.

 

Q-Step Quantitative Lecturers

School of Social and Political Sciences 

Dr Thees Spreckelsen

Thees joined Glasgow’s Q-Step Centre in October 2019 and is now Senior Lecturer in Research Methods. He holds a DPhil. In Sociology from the University of Oxford, Nuffield College. Previously he was a "Lecturer for Evidence-based Quantitative Methods" and "Research Fellow for Quantitative Methods" at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford. Prior to that he has been lecturer in Quantitative Sociology at the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK) and a post-doctoral research officer at the Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention and the Oxford Institute of Social Policy at the at the University of Oxford. His research has focused on the labour market integration of EU migrants.

 Skill set

  • Basic Statistics
  • Research Design
  • Linear Regression
  • Multilevel Modelling
  • Quasi-experimental Methods
  • Meta-analysis/Meta-regression for systematic reviews
  • Software: R/Stata

Dr Michael Heaney

Michael is a Lecturer in Politics and Research Methods at the University of Glasgow.  He is a political scientist who studies how social networks, social movements, interest groups, and political parties shape organizational processes and policy outcomes.  

Michael received a Ph.D. in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Chicago.  He has been a faculty member at the University of Michigan and the University of Florida, a research fellow at the University of Glasgow, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, and a Congressional Fellow for the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Kirstie Ken English

Kirstie Ken is a mixed methods social researcher with experiences across a range of academic and third sector projects. They were part of the University of Glasgow’s first cohort of Q-Step students, graduating in 2018 with a first-class Honours degree in Sociology with Quantitative Methods. They were awarded a Q-Step scholarship to build upon their research skills via the University of Sheffield Social Research Masters. Kirstie Ken’s PhD research looks at how differences of sex, gender and sexuality should be represented by UK population surveys. Their broader areas of interests and expertise are in promoting data literacy, the production and use of equality, diversity and inclusion data, gender, sexuality and human rights. To find out more about their work visit their website.

Skill Set 

  • Survey design, analysis and application
  • Mixed methods research 
  • Queer and feminist research design 
  • Basic statistics 
  • Regression analysis 
  • Github
  • Software: R 

Ben Rosher

Ben is a political sociologist and PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Glasgow on the QStep, data visualisation, and undergraduate quantitative methods programmes. He received his undergraduate degree in Politics with Quantitative Methods from the University of Glasgow in 2019 and his MRes in Social Research from Queen’s University Belfast in 2020. 

Ben’s research interests include; borders, migration, citizenship, and ontological security, specifically within the context of Brexit. 

Ben is also a Research Associate at the Centre for Cross Border Studies, and a Research Assistant working on the Political Attitudes Module of the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey.

 

School of Education

Dr Joanna Wincenciak

Joanna is a senior lecturer in Quantitative Methods and in Psychology and a Director of Learning and Teaching based in the School of Education, University of Glasgow. She joined the Q-Step team in 2019, following a 3 year lectureship in Education and Psychology. Her teaching focuses on Research Methods (quantitative and qualitative), Human Development and Cognitive Psychology.  Joanna is an experimental psychologist with interest in emotion science, social cognition, and perception. Her past and current research focuses on emotional competence and perception in general, clinical (e.g. Parkinson’s Disease) and vulnerable populations (e.g. children), biases in person perception and neurological basis of human behaviour. 

Skill set:

  • Basic Statistics
  • Research Design
  • Multilevel Modelling
  • Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Methods
  • Psychophysics
  • Github
  • HTML/CSS/JavaScript 
  • Software: R/Matlab/SPSS 

School of Mathematics and Statistics

Dr Nema Dean

Nema graduated with her PhD. in Statistics in 2006 from the Department of Statistics in the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. She is currently a Reader in Statistics in the School of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Glasgow. Nema's research interests are in developing new clustering and classification methods in spatial, spatio-temporal and non-spatial settings, also combining social network methods with causal inference. Past work has involved research on finite mixture model based methods and variations that incorporate variable selection and semi-supervised updating.

Skill set

  • Basic/Intermediate Statistics
  • Linear Regression
  • Generalised Linear Models
  • Mixed Effects Models
  • Spatial Models for Areal Data
  • Bayesian and Frequentist Statistics
  • Approximate Bayesian Methods
  • Machine Learning Methods
  • Latent Variable Methods
  • Clustering and Classification Methods
  • Social Network Analysis
  • Basic Causal Inference
  • Software: R (expert), Python (basic)

 

Q-Step Administrators

Ms Lesley Scott

Lesley is the Administrator for SPS Undergraduate Q-Step courses and is based in the School of Social & Political Science’s admin office; Room 210, Adam Smith Building.

Mrs Arlene Mochan

Arlene is a Part-Time Support Administrator to staff.

Enquiries should be directed to the Glasgow Q-Step Centre Mailbox

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