PhD spotlight

Andrew Hind is a self-funded part-time student in Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton. His research uses the ONS Internal migration detailed estimates to explore how internal migration shapes population change at local authority district level.

Andrew is particularly interested in the associations between education and migration, including family migration driven by school catchment areas, boarding at elite “public schools”, and the residential component of the university system. His supervisors are Jakub Bijak, Professor of Statistical Demography, and Jason Hilton, Lecturer in Social Statistics and Data Science, both at the University of Southampton.

“My first degree was in English at Jesus College Cambridge. I then completed a post-graduate certificate in education at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. I taught in inner-city secondary schools in Leicester for almost 15 years and was a trade union officer. On several occasions I was involved with the opening and closing of schools as numbers rose and fell. I became education policy officer at Reading Borough Council preparing for it to become a local education authority in 1998 on the break-up of Berkshire County Council.

I held a senior role at Southampton City Council between 2002 and 2010, overseeing major changes to the primary, secondary and special needs sectors. This got me interested in population change and how it affects the demand for school places.

I had done an MBA at Southampton Business School and became interested in the University’s MSc in Demography. After being invited to sit in on a few modules by Professor Nikos Tzavidis, Head of Economic, Social and Political Sciences, I enrolled on the course and had a very enjoyable two years studying demographic methods. On graduating I had no intention of doing a PhD, but after a couple of years I enrolled as a part-time student again.

CPC members Jakub Bijak and Jason Hilton are my PhD supervisors, and they have been very supportive.

My chosen topic is internal migration and how it contributes to population change at local authority districts. As an educationalist I am particularly interested in the way the school and university systems drive so much internal migration. It is a topic that seems to interest many people – nearly all of us have internal migration stories, and opinions on the way residential mobility shapes communities.

The technical outputs of my thesis will be a smoothing system, based on that proposed by Professor Andrei Rogers and colleagues, that is tailored to features of 21st century English and Welsh internal migration. I will also demonstrate an approach which shows the association between k-means clustering of migration schedules and context, such as educational attainment and deprivation, as well as alternative ways of treating internal migration in small area population projections.

I have enjoyed completing three summer courses at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock – led by Carl Schmertmann, Giancarlo Camardo, and Jonas Schöley. I have also attended British Society of Population Studies conferences in Leeds, Winchester and Cardiff.

Alongside my studies I have done some part-time consultancy work involving school place planning for Essex and Kent county councils, Herefordshire and the London Borough of Redbridge.

I find part-time research combining academic study at the University and applied work in local authorities very rewarding. I am very grateful for the opportunity to pursue advanced studies at my career stage in Social Statistics and Demography."