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We’re proud to announce the 2026 UCL Policy Fellows. This year, our Fellowship programme has cohorts within the London Local Authority
London Local Authority
The London Local Authority Policy Fellowships, will be run in partnership with the London Boroughs of Camden, Islington and Newham for the second year, with support from UCL’s Office of the Pro-Provost (London)
Lecturer at UCL Social Research Institute
Nelly’s specialising in the Sociology of Childhood, Children’s Rights, and Global Childhood Studies.
Her work focuses on violence, protection, and street-connected children. It explores how lived experience, institutions, and law intersect to shape children’s experiences of protection, exclusion, and everyday life.
Her PhD was an ethnography of street girls and young street mothers in Cairo, exploring everyday violence, survival, gender, and vulnerability under conditions of extreme marginalisation.
Alongside her academic work, she has contributed to policy facing and public engagement work relating to violence against women and girls, child protection, and participation.
Fellowship Host Organisation: Islington Council
Fellowship Project: Nelly will work with Islington Council to support the development of an evidence informed, survivor centred Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, with a focus on prevention, coordinated response, and commissioning.
Research Associate, Epidemiology & Public Health
Her main interest lies in understanding how interactions with physical environments—particularly travel behaviours—affect physical and mental health.
She is currently researching sociodemographic factors associated with active travel to work, using the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS‑LS).
She is also involved in a project modelling air‑pollution exposure for London Underground commuters and examining long‑term health outcomes.
She co‑leads the Demographic Analysis (IEHC0032) module for the Population Health BSc. She also teachs on the Measuring Population Health (IEHC0026) module, focusing on mortality and life expectancy, and on the Dimensions of Inequality (IEHC0052) module in the Social Epidemiology MSc, where she covers Transport and Health. In addition, She supervises MSc dissertation projects.
Fellowship Host Organisation: Islington Borough Council
Fellowship Project: Jemima is based within Islington’s road safety team, providing strategic guidance and a roadmap to help maintain momentum toward their Vision Zero 2041 goal.
Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Behavioural Science, UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change.
Vivi’s work focuses on optimising behaviour change interventions in healthcare, particularly supporting professionals’ practice and generating evidence to inform national policy. She has led projects on topics ranging from vaccination uptake to digital health and sustainability, applying behaviour change theory to address the complexity of healthcare systems.
Vivi has extensive experience at the research–policy interface and is committed to supporting evidence-informed policymaking.
Fellowship Host Organisation: Newham Borough Council
Fellowship Project: Vivi is based within Newham’s transformation team, exploring how predictive AI can be used in their services to support the national shift from analogue to digital.
Research Fellow in Computational Social Science, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)
Ruth works at the intersection of spatial data science, population geography, and demography. She is currently a Research Fellow on the No Space Like Home project, which investigates the spatial distribution of small homes (<37m²) across England using large-scale administrative and spatial data to inform housing policy and planning debates.
Ruth has contributed to policy-relevant research on human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America in collaboration with the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and on climate-related internal displacement in the East and Horn of Africa in collaboration with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). She has also worked on research examining the displacement of Ukrainian refugees. Her work frequently draws on innovative spatial data sources, including digital trace data, to support evidence-based policymaking during periods of rapid change.
Fellowship Host Organisation: Newham Council
Fellowship Project: Ruth is based within Newham’s Property team creating a comprehensive analysis of future population trends that will be used to shape a range of public services and support the council’s spatial development plans and strategies.
Centre for Net Zero Market Design
Mason Parker is the Program Manager for the Centre for Net Zero Market Design at UCL, stewarding a responsibility for a growing £5 Million portfolio of projects to support research development, dissemination, as well as policy and stakeholder engagement in the UK and beyond.
Fellowship Host Organisation: Camden Council
Fellowship Project: Mason is based within Camden’s Strategy Team to help define what inclusive growth means in practice, drawing on research, community engagement, and policy development.
Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Global Health, in the Department of Global Health Equity and Social Justice.
Komal has a background in public health nutrition and social epidemiology, global health evaluation and participatory research. She currently leads a UKRI funded project examining inequalities in infant and child nutrition within the British Pakistani community in Bradford.
Komal has a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology from University College London and an MSc in Nutrition for Global Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Fellowship Host Organisation: Camden Council Food Mission Team and the Camden Food Partnership
Dr Karen Mak
Senior Research Fellow in Epidemiology and Statistics, Department of Behavioural Science and Health
Karen’s research focuses on how social, cultural, arts, and community engagement is associated with improvements in mental health/wellbeing and identifies enablers and barriers to engagement across the UK and worldwide.
Fellowship host organisation: Policy Unit, Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Fellowship portfolio: Karen will be working on a range of activities to support DCMS’s Policy Unit.