The fifth LARIA North East Networking event was well-attended, with 17 attendees and five presenters. Held at Newcastle Civic Centre, we enjoyed a mixture of presentations on research strategies and techniques, and the chance to meet other North East local area researchers.

We first heard from Dr Mandy Cheetham and Samantha Redgate on the topic ‘A new way forward for local authority research; the LACOR project’. They discussed how Newcastle City Council and the FUSE centre had worked together to develop an embedded culture of research in a local authority. For more information please contact Dr Cheetham here: M.Cheetham@tees.ac.uk

Next, Gary Murphy from Newcastle City Council discussed how the Python software and machine learning can help to map the private rented sector in a local authority area. For more information about this please contact Gary here: gary.murphy@newcastle.gov.uk LARIA North East members had mentioned at earlier networking events that they wanted more time to get to know each other, so we had a tea and coffee breaks after each presentation for people to discuss their projects and explore opportunities to work together.

Louise Reeve from Newcastle City Council and Simon Taylor from QSR International talked about how qualitative analysis software, such as Interpris, can be used to speed up analysis of consultation and survey responses. For more information, contact Louise Reeve at: louise.reeve@newcastle.gov.uk   Finally, Louise Reeve, the LARIA North East Regional Organiser, presented on ‘What’s happening with LARIA nationally?’, including the online forum, the recent LARIA Awayday strategic planning meeting, and the upcoming LARIA One Day Conference in November 2019.

Feedback on the event was generally positive and included comments such as:

‘It is really interesting to see how others do things, and ideas I can take back into my workplace for the analysis I carry out, in particular Interpris [qualitative analysis software] and the survey analysis techniques.’

‘It felt informal enough to be able to have good honest discussions.’

Topics suggested for future events were:

‘Health and Wellbeing’

‘Talk through R’

‘Data visualisation, and career progression within the research and analysis field.’

‘Possibly something around data sourcing? We spend a lot of time trying to source data and it may be interesting to find out how others do it to help us to use our time more efficiently and effectively.’

Thanks to everyone who attended for making it such an amazing event. The next one will be in Spring 2020. Watch this space! Louise Reeve Email: louise.reeve@newcastle.gov.uk