Lee Williamson

Lee Williamson is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Geosciences, specializing in demographic methods and longitudinal techniques. Their research spans demography, fertility behaviour, inequality in health and mortality, birth parity, early life conditions, historical demography, and population projections, with strong emphasis on Scottish administrative data and census records.

Williamson's work integrates social sciences, epidemiology, and environmental health through advanced statistical methodologies. They investigate how demographic factors influence health outcomes across the lifespan, particularly examining early life exposures and their long-term effects on aging populations. Their fingerprint reveals significant contributions to Population Censuses, Secondary Schools research, Mental Health studies, and Machine Learning applications in social science contexts.

Recent publications demonstrate Williamson's focus on critical societal issues: analyzing school absences and exclusions in Scottish education systems, exploring mental health benefits of active commuting, and investigating long-term health impacts of early-life air pollution exposure. These studies consistently employ sophisticated longitudinal modeling and instrumental variable techniques to address complex population-level questions.

As Principal Investigator for the ESRC-funded 'Cens-able' project (2024-2026), Williamson leads initiatives improving census data research in Scotland. Previous projects include 'Understanding Children's Lives and Outcomes' (2020-2022) as Co-investigator and 'Britain's first demographic transition' (2020-2024) as Principal Investigator, securing substantial research funding for demographic analysis.

Williamson actively collaborates through the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR), engaging in interdisciplinary teams across Scottish universities. Their public engagement includes the 'Governance and data access' exhibition (2015), promoting transparent data usage in population research while addressing contemporary challenges in education, public health, and environmental epidemiology.