Rory Fitzgerald

Biography

"Dr. Rory Fitzgerald has been a Senior Research Fellow at City, University of London since 2004, and from 2013 became the Director of the European Social Survey (ESS). In November 2013 the UK and 14 other European governments established the European Social Survey as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS ERIC) – an independent international research organisation hosted at City, University of London. Rory is the first Director of ESS ERIC and oversees the ESS Core Scientific Team (CST) and the ESS National Coordinators Forum. In addition to these committees he works closely with the General Assembly as well as the Scientific and Methods advisory boards. The ESS is a rigorous comparative biennial survey of changing attitudes and values in up to 34 European countries. With other members of the CST, he was awarded the Descartes Prize in 2005 for 'excellence in collaborative scientific research'. In 2016 the ESS was declared to be a landmark infrastructure by the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures in Europe (ESFRI). There are just under 100,000 registered users of the ESS data and over 3,000 publications using the data available online. Rory is an Associate Editor of the Survey Research Methods Journal and sits on the editorial board for the International Journal of Public Opinion Research."

Research Interest

Mr Fitzgerald's key area of expertise is cross-national survey methodology with a focus on questionnaire design and pre-testing as well as non response issues. He also played a leading role in the ESS preparatory phase and the establishment of the ESS as an ERIC.