Oliver Duke-Williams

Wishing everyone who is celebrating a Happy Year of the Horse from UCL Arts & Humanities 🏮

Watch messages for the New Year from our Dean, Heads of Departments and students from across our faculty.

新年快乐!
buff.ly/bMKyx4b

'Indeed, the disintegration of geography at the University of Leicester is premised on the pretence that it is possible to keep elements of physical geography and deliver undergraduate geography degrees without any human geographers. This fundamentally misunderstands what geography is'. 2/2

Thomas Cranmer’s Register Discover Thomas Cranmer’s Register (1533–1553), a pivotal Reformation document revealing England’s break from Rome and the rise of Protestantism. This open access book offers unprecedented access with...

The death of Dr Paul Ayris is huge loss to UCL, to @uclpress.bsky.social and to the open access/scholarly communications community more broadly.

His open access Thomas Cranmer’s Register
A record of archiepiscopal administration in diocese and province is published by the Press in January. 1/2

ONS Focus on X: "Research capability 2025 is here with @adr_uk ! ✨ @ONS’s Bill South shares how this year’s theme, Research for the Public Good, reflects our ongoing commitment to enable secure access to de-identified, unpublished data for research to make a positive impact on society. https://t.co/ziEO4TisuT" / X Research capability 2025 is here with @adr_uk ! ✨ @ONS’s Bill South shares how this year’s theme, Research for the Public Good, reflects our ongoing commitment to enable secure access to de-identified, unpublished data for research to make a positive impact on society. https://t.co/ziEO4TisuT

Congratulations to the @celsiusnews.bsky.social team, winners of the Secure Data Creation award at ONS Research Capability 2025

Nine risks caused by AI notetakers — Careful Industries AI transcription tools are not currently mature or reliable enough to be regarded as an always on, single-source of truth for meeting notes. Nine common risks, and six possible mitigations.

I've written up the findings from our work with people and organisations who have used AI notetakers in meetings, identified 9 risks and a bunch of mitigation strategies. www.careful.industries/blog/2025-11...

Using historic UK census data for research

Free workshop on ‘Using historical census data for research’, 23 October www.sas.ac.uk/digital-huma...

Getting started with open LLMs for humanities research

Free workshop (two afternoons) on ‘Getting started with open LLMs for humanities research’, 6-7 November www.sas.ac.uk/digital-huma...

AI generated text states: Regional breakdown (for England and Wales) * South East: 9,278,100 (Most populous region) * London: 8,799,800 (Second most populous) * East of England: Saw the highest population growth rate between 2011 and 2021.

London - England & Wales second most populous region, according to Google's AI overview

Launch of the new UK Data Service Data Catalogue — UK Data Service We’re pleased to announce the launch of our new UK Data Service Data Catalogue. This updated data catalogue has been designed with user...

🚀 We’re pleased to announce the launch of our new UK Data Service Data Catalogue!

This updated data catalogue has been designed with user feedback at its core to make finding and working with data faster and easier.

🔗 ukdataservice.ac.uk/2025/10/08/l...

Yesterday the Royal Society held a series of panels & keynotes in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Turing Test. The unanimous critical takes on AGI, big tech's power concentration & the call for urgent action left me w hope things might be turning

Watch here m.youtube.com/live/GmnBTCK...

Trump wants a new U.S. census to exclude people here illegally. It'd be unprecedented Trump is calling for a "new" census that excludes people in the U.S. without legal status. The 14th Amendment requires the "whole number of persons in each state" in a key set of census results.

THREAD: There are a lot of unanswered questions 12 hours after President Trump — who, according to the Constitution, has no final authority over the census — released a social media post calling for unprecedented changes to how the government produces data that forms the foundation of U.S. democracy

Can you help with the redevelopment of the Health Survey for England and future collection of population health data?
The ONS has re-opened a questionnaire to gather feedback until 25 July: studies.ons.gov.uk/s/Future_HSE/ Find out more about discussions at our recent conference: lnkd.in/eua8-2Bt

The Government have now "commissioned the Office for National Statistics to conduct a mandatory, questionnaire-based, whole-population census of England and Wales in 2031"

Yay for fans of censuses!

A good time to repost my blog following the recommendation a few weeks ago

Census data is also set apart from most other sources through being mandatory - as well as having to be fit for purpose for main gov/academic etc uses, there's a moral need to make it accessible for all potential users

Census data users are diverse and vary significantly in their needs; to realise that national asset, we need to provide a variety of routes to make the data usable

Pleased to have the opportunity to talk about user needs at the joint @bspsuk.bsky.social @ukdataservice.bsky.social @celsiusnews.bsky.social ONS meeting on the future of UK Demographic data

This slide from Jason Zawadski on the (recommended) 2031 Census as a vital national asset

The Future of the UK Demographic System conference, organised between the British Society for Population Studies (BSPS), Office for National Statistics, the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information and User Support (CeLSIUS) and the UK Data Service, hosted at
@ucl.ac.uk, is currently underway.

How much will the ethnic profile of the UK change from migration and natural change over the next one hundred years? Will 'White British' become a minority?

I've tried to have a look at the data on this - and I didn't find what I thought I would.

georginasturge.substack.com/p/will-white...

The @ukdataservice.bsky.social’s Labour Force and Annual Populations User Conference 2025 is now underway, with a packed room of intrigued attendees. The keynote speaker - @heejungchung.bsky.social has been providing fascinating insights into her global research on the impact of remote working.

Consultation doc mentions topics previously considered but not used (e.g. income), and topics used in England & Wales and/or NI, but not in Scotland

Finally - allows people to mention topics they think should be added to the census

Some admin sources are good, others more limited; some comes from surveys that are OK at national or regional scale, but sample not large enough for fine categories / small areas

BUT! Clear that admin data v much part of planning / implementation of census and important part of future pop data

The consultation doc is worth reading to understand the potential/limits of admin data - it lists current census topics and explains user need, and then summarises availability in non-census data

The Scottish Government have now launched a consultation on 2031 Census topics - this was mentioned in the announcement yesterday, but I think the link was missing from the initial version of the document (I don't know how quickly it was updated)

consult.gov.scot/national-rec...

Well folks, looks like we are having another census 💃🏻

UK Stats Authority is officially endorsing it. Now ministers need to consider the recommendation and decide.

Admin data is still the way of the future - but we're not done with the census yet.

uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/publication/...

The future of the UK demographic system — UK Data Service A comprehensive resource funded by the ESRC to support researchers, teachers and policymakers who depend on high-quality social and economic data.

As trailed in the blog, we have a hybrid day meeting co-arranged by UK Data Service, BSPS, CeLSIUS and ONS, hosted at UCL where we will be discussing the future of the UK demographic system - and the role of a 2031 census in that system

Register:

ukdataservice.ac.uk/events/the-f...

Only Connect A still from the BBC2 quiz show "Only Connect". Quiz host Victoria Coren Mitchell is shown with four clues, teams have to state the connection between the clues. The clues are: 1) "Battle of Agincourt" 2) "Pocahontas dies" 3) "Peterloo Massacre" 4) "(e.g.) next UK Census"

News about 'the next UK Census' - a blog by me on today's announcements by ONS, NRS and NISRA recommending a full #census in 2031

blog.ukdataservice.ac.uk/future-of-20...

@ukdataservice.bsky.social @celsiusnews.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk @bspsuk.bsky.social

Signposts against a dusky sky

🚨New on the Data Impact blog🚨

The UK Statistics Agency (and their Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts) have made their recommendations to the @ukgovernment.bsky.social about the future of the 2031 #census

@oliverdw.bsky.social explores further

blog.ukdataservice.ac.uk/future-of-20...

As we approach the end of the UK Data Service's UK Census User Conference 2025, which has been very successful, attendees have enjoyed hearing from inspirational speakers, who work for the Royal British Legion, talking about how they have used Census data to help improve the lives of veterans.

During the final talks in our research paper sessions, we featured a number of fascinating speakers talking about their work using Census data, including Katrin Metsis, from the University of St Andrews, who spoke about her discoveries around gender inequality in general health among young people.

Momoko Nishikido, from Queen's University Belfast, spoke today about Census findings around ethnicity. Daniel Jones, from the UK Home Office, also spoke about Refugee Integration Outcomes (RIO) insights. Plus, Andreas Mastrosavvas, from UCL, explained how they help users with ONS Longitudinal Study.