Research
My interdisciplinary research project is focused on advancing economic development in South Yorkshire through the education and skills sector. My particular interest is investigating post-16 education and labour market trajectories using sequence and cluster analysis. The UK Government has made Levelling Up education a key aspect of its economic strategy and this project aims to provide an evidence base to achieve this for the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. This project is supervised by Professor Philip McCann, Professor Gwilym Pryce and Professor Andy Dickerson.
PhD Paper 2
2023-2024
Education and Labour Market Trajectories in UK City Regions​
Data
39 million+ individuals
Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) combining data from
​
Access granted through the
Secure Research Service as an Accredited Researcher.
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Programming Language
​Primarily using R, with database querying using SQL and maps produced using QGIS.
Methods
Sequence analysis, Cluster analysis and multinomial logistic regression.
PhD Paper 1
2021-2022
Unlocking the geography of education and employment: Levelling Up English life-course trajectories​
Data
40,000+ households
Data provided under Special Licence access by the
​
Programming Language
​Primarily using R and RStudio, with some pre-processing using QGIS.
Methods
Sequence analysis, Cluster analysis and multinomial logistic regression.
Publications
Sickotra, S. (2025) Data Resource Profile: A Guide for Constructing School-to-work Sequence Analysis Trajectories Using the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) Data, International Journal of Population Data Science, 8(6). doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v8i6.2953
News Article
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Sickotra, S. (2024) Levelling up in a ‘decentralised’ England: place-based or ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategies?, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 11(1), pp. 724–737. doi: 10.1080/21681376.2024.2419135.
Levelling up England: Are strategies place-based or ‘one-size-fits-all’?
News article on The Academic based on published paper.
Sickotra, S. (2023). Mapping South Yorkshire employees by occupation industry. People, Place and Policy, 17(2), pp. 100-102. doi: 10.3351/ppp.2023.5989659995.
Mapping of the spatial distribution of Education, Skills and Training deprivation and employee clusters by occupation industry in South Yorkshire.
Included within the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority Weekly
Policy Briefing (10/02/23)
Presentations & Conferences
​Regional Studies Association Winter Conference, Cities and Regions of Tomorrow: Towards Better Regional Futures, London, November 2023
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Alan Turing Presentations and Networking event, London, February 2023
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South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority Education, Skills and Employability meeting, Sheffield, March 2023
