Professor Gwilym Pryce

School of Economics

Professor of Urban Economics and Social Statistics

Co-Director of the ESRC CDT Data Analytics and Society

g.pryce@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 7121

Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS)

Full contact details

Professor Gwilym Pryce
School of Economics
Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS)
219 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP

Profile

Gwilym is Professor of Urban Economics and Social Statistics in the School of Economics at The University of Sheffield. He is currently Director of the ESRC/Nordforsk ‘Life at the Frontier’ research project, a multidisciplinary initiative spanning the UK, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. He is also Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Analytics and Society, and a co-investigator on the ESRC Centre for Care. Gwilym was formerly Associate Director of the ESRC Urban Big Data Centre, Founding Director of the Glasgow Q-Step Centre, Co-Director of the ESRC AQMEN Research Centre, Co-Director of the ESRC Understanding Inequalities research project, and Founding Director of the Sheffield Methods Institute.

Gwilym was born in 1970 in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a steel worker. At age 7, he moved with his family to Goole, in North Humberside and completed his secondary education at Goole Grammar School. He moved to Leeds in 1988 to study Economics and Public Policy at Leeds Business School (LMU), graduating with a First in 1991. After a year studying theology at Covenant College in the Midlands, he completed a MSc in Economics at the University of Warwick. After a short stint at Aberdeen University researching capital charges in the NHS under the supervision of Professor David Heald, he was awarded an ESRC Research Fellowship in the Centre for Housing Research and Urban Studies, University of Glasgow in 1995. He progressed to Lecturer in 1996, Senior Lecturer in 2003 and to Professor of Urban Economics and Social Statistics in 2006. Gwilym moved to the University of Sheffield in 2014 to lead the Sheffield Methods Institute. Gwilym joined the School of Economics in September 2022.

Research interests

Gwilym's core research interests are in the broad field of urban studies. His current research focuses on issues of inequality, discrimination, immigration and residential segregation, and how these issues vary geographically to impact crime, wellbeing, social mobility and the local economy. Gwilym is also interested in the levelling-up implications of these phenomena and works closely with a variety of stakeholders to understand their implications for policy and practice.

Examples of his current research include:

Pryce, G., Wang, Y. P., Chen, Y., Shan, J., & Wei, H. (2021). Urban inequality and segregation in Europe and China: Towards a new dialogue (p. 373). Springer Nature (Open Access).
Fingleton, B., Olner, D., & Pryce, G. (2020). Estimating the local employment impacts of immigration: A dynamic spatial panel model. Urban Studies, 57(13), 2646-2662.
Dean, N., Dong, G., Piekut, A., & Pryce, G. (2019). Frontiers in residential segregation: understanding neighbourhood boundaries and their impacts. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 110(3), 271-288.

Publications

Journal articles

Zhang ML, Piekut A, Rasool Z, Warden L, Staples H & Pryce G (2024) Using residents and experts to evaluate the validity of areal wombling for detecting social boundaries: a small-scale feasibility study. PLOS ONE, 19(8). View this article in WRRO
Williams R, Bell A, Garratt E & Pryce G (2022) Understanding the effect of universal credit on housing insecurity in England: a difference-in-differences approach. Housing Studies.
H. Hendershott P, Pryce G & White M (2003) Household Leverage and the Deductibility of Home Mortgage Interest: Evidence from U.K. House Purchasers. Journal of Housing Research, 14(1), 49-82.
Zhu J & Pryce G () Measuring the impact of immigration on neighbourhood house prices: evidence from England and Wales. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment.
Pryce G () Theorising the Causal Impacts of Social Frontiers: The Social and Psychological Implications of Discontinuities in the Geography of Residential Mix. Urban Studies.
Pryce G () The Conflicting Geographies of Social Frontiers Exploring the asymmetric impacts of social frontiers on household mobility in Rotterdam. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science.

Chapters

Owen G & Pryce G (2024) Housing Wealth, The Routledge Handbook of Housing Economics (pp. 69-81). Routledge
Owen G & Pryce G (2024) Housing Wealth, The Routledge Handbook of Housing Economics (pp. 69-81). Taylor & Francis
Pryce G, Emery JD & Olner D (2023) Steel City: Deindustrialisation and Peripheralisation in Sheffield, UK [translation of Steel city: deindustrializzazione e periferizzazione a Sheffield, Regno Unito Clément Barbier, La costruzione della periferia] In Griseri P & Iannello A (Ed.), Periferie: Barriere nelle città FrancoAngeli s.r.l. View this article in WRRO

Reports

Piekut A, Staples H, Pryce G & Rasool Z (2024) Social Frontiers and Community Life in Rotherham West
Petrillo M, Bennett MR & Price G (2022) Cycles of caring: transitions in and out of unpaid care. View this article in WRRO

Performances

Krasteva L, Uzma R, Gilbert C, Piekut A, Staples H, Rasool Z & Pryce G (2022, September 20) Blurring the Edges. Festival of the Mind 2022.

Working papers

Petrillo M, Valdenegro D, Rahal C, Zhang Y & Bennett MR (2025) Estimating the Cost of Informal Care with a Novel Two-Stage Approach to Individual Synthetic Control. The Sheffield Economic Research Paper Series (SERPS), 2025004.

Datasets

Staples H, Piekut A, Rasool Z & Pryce G (2024) ‘Life at the Frontier’ - Rotherham (UK) case study qualitative data.
Zhang ML, Piekut A, Rasool Z, Warden L, Staples H & Pryce G (2024) A discrete choice experiment to validate the use of areal wombling for detecting social boundaries.