Dr Roger Beecham

Profile

Roger Beecham is Associate Professor in Visual Data Science at School of Geography and Director of Research & Innovation at Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA). He is a member of the Institute for Spatial Data Science and co-leads LIDA’s Visualization programme. His research and teaching develops, applies and evaluates visualization techniques in the analysis of large social science datasets. He has published award-winning methodological research in Data Visualization, as well as applied studies in top-tier journals in Transport, Health and Political Geography. Roger’s approach to analysis is demonstrated  in his upcoming book, with CRC Press, Visualization for Social Data Science.

Research interests

Roger joined Leeds in 2017 after completing a PhD and postdoc at the giCentre. His research develops, applies and evaluates visualization techniques in the analysis of large social science datasets. This spans several disciplinary areas: Information Visualization, Spatial Statistics, Transport, Health, Crime Science and Political Geography.

Roger's PhD research, with Transport for London, developed interactive visualization tools for exploring spatial structure in large-scale transport datasets. His postdoc, with West Midlands Police, developed new visualization techniques to support multivariate spatiotemporal analysis and improve crime monitoring and reporting, as well as innovative empirical work investigating how spatial statistics are perceived in data graphics (see Map LineUps). At Leeds, Roger has applied novel visualization techniques in the analysis of labour market geography, recent electoral outcomes including the 2019 UK General Election and Trump vote, the geographic spread of Covid-19 and transport risk monitoring. A current focus is in the role of visualization in shaping scientific model-building and communication – see his upcoming Alan Turing Institute Methods Challenge on the Forking Paths problem.

Roger has been involved with funded research projects from diverse sources, including the EPSRC, ESRC, ERC, Wellcome Trust. For the latest updates see Roger’s personal research page.

• INFUZE (Inspiring Futures for Zero Carbon Mobility)

Qualifications

• PhD GIScience, University of London
• BA Geography, Durham University (Robin Mills Award)

Student education

Roger is Programme co-Lead on the Consumer Analytics and Marketing Strategy (CAMS) MSc and convenes GEOG5009 Visualization for Social Data Science, GEOG5967 CAMS Dissertations and GEOG5927 Predictive Analytics. 

Research groups and institutes

• Institute for Spatial Data Science

Current postgraduate researchers

• Juan P. Fonseca-Zamora