Mr Rory Fitzgerald has been a Senior Research Fellow at City University London since 2004 and became Deputy Director of its Centre for Comparative Social Surveys in 2007. He plays a lead role in the design, management and overall coordination of the European Social Survey (ESS) and a senior member of its Central Coordinating Team (CCT). The ESS is a rigorous comparative survey of changing attitudes and values in and between 34 European countries. With other members of the CCT he was awarded the Descartes prize in 2005 for 'excellence in collaborative scientific research'.