James Newell

Title

Senior Associate

Profile

James Newell is currently working with the Institute of Policy Studies on a Statistics NZ Official Statistics Research 2006/2007 project exploring methods for classifying the ethnicity of families. He is also part of the Institute of Policy Studies FRST funded "Education capital formation, employment, migration, gender, work-life balance and missing men" research programme which runs from 2007 to 2010. James has a particular interest in statistical systems design, development and application for this latter project.

James is a researcher with more than 20 years experience mainly as an independent researcher working with central, local government and NGOs on issues to do with the labour market, migration, population change and development with a particular interest in understanding regions and their development histories.

He started his professional working life in the Strategic Planning Group of Town and Country Planning Directorate, Head Office, Ministry of Works and Development from 1984 through to 1985. He then had a one year posting with the Social Impact Unit at Town and Country Planning during 1986 at the time that the time that the state sector restructuring programme began. He then went out to the regions working as soocial planner (community development) with the Northland United Council between 1987 through to 1988. During that time he developed and operated the experimental Hokianga Community Development Pilot Project and also worked extensively on the establishment and operations of the regional State Sector Corporatisation social impacts management programme for the Northland Region. In 1988 he left to become an independent researcher working first in Auckland for two years engaged principally in projects which bridged the formation of the Waitakere City Council such as the West Auckland Social Services Review. During that time he spent a year lecturing in Quantitative Planning Techniques at the School of Planning, University of Auckland.

Since late 1989 he has been based in Wellington working with a wide range of central and local government agencies and some NGOs working under the umbrella of MERA (Monitoring and Evaluation Research Associates). He founded MERA as a working base in 1990. His work since that time reflects a particular interest in the planning problems and associated operational forecasting methods / management applications associated with infrastructure and service planning for schools, early childhood education services, immigration services and local government infrastructure. At the core of this work is an interest in understanding national, regional and local population and development dynamics and their applications.

Working with the Population Studies Centre at the University of Waikato he developed the first full region migration accounting model in 2000 and has since extensively refined and extended that initial work. Working with Kerry Papps and the Labour Market Policy Group, Department of Labour, he developed a New Zealand functional local labour market spatial classification in 2001. His recent work has reflected a growing interest in supply side issues to do with labour market skills and occupational workforces. This has involved mapping the links between population dynamics and migration processes, educational capital accumulation and the labour market which leads into the IPS 2007-2010 FRST programme.

James is a past president of the Population Association of New Zealand and has worked for many years on the committee of the NZ Association for Impact Assessment and its predecessor the Association for Social Assessment. He graduated with a Bachelors of Science with (first class) honours in Botany/Biology from Otago University in 1982 and gained a Master of Science (Resource Management/Environmental Science) from Centre for Resource Management, Lincoln/Canterbury Universities in 1984 with additional specialisation in Regional Planning.