Ellie Roberts

Research Director

Ellie Roberts is a Research Director in NatCen’s Crime and Justice Team and has extensive experience managing and delivering research and complex evaluations on a range of sensitive subjects.  She specialises in qualitative research and has interests which span areas such as prison reform, rehabilitation, substance misuse, poverty and inequality.

Ellie is highly experienced in qualitative methodologies including depth interviews and focus groups which she has undertaken with a wide range of participant groups, including offenders and victims. She currently leads two large-scale qualitative process evaluations for the Ministry of Justice on prison reform and GPS tagging and an evaluation of an alcohol monitoring tagging pilot for the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner.  She has also recently completed projects on a through-the-gate substance misuse pilot, family courts, extremism and organised crime.

Ellie is a member of NatCen’s Research Ethics Committee and currently delivers training on qualitative research methods and design, focus groups and managing challenging interviews for the Social Research Association, government departments and universities.

Before joining NatCen in 2014, Ellie held research posts at Community Links and the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (now the Learning and Work Institute).