I graduated from St Andrews University in 2013 with a PhD in Statistics. My research focus was on spatial point process models in a Bayesian context. Since then, I have gained experience in modelling time to event data (in a Bayesian context), constructing R packages, analysing longitudinal data and spatiotemporal data, construction of complex survey weights, factor analysis and machine learning. I possess broad skills covering both Bayesian and Frequentist statistical modelling, and have developed custom models that are perfectly suited to the task at hand rather than using off-the-shelf models.
I also collaborate with other Statisticians and Epidemiologists– for example on projects that involve Area Interaction Point Process Models, Log Gaussian Cox Processes, LMM, ARIMA, HMM, GLMs and COVID-19 surveillance.
My hobbies include playing piano and building R Shiny apps for data visualization
RSS Fellow in April 2018, Chancellor's Fellow (University of Edinburgh), 2021Type your paragraph here.
Publications
Stephen Jun Villejo; Andrew Seaton; Luciana Brondi; Noel Fabiana Oliveira de Moura; Claudio Maierovitch P. Henriques; Ewelina Rydzewska-Fazekas; Glenna Nightingale: Climate types and dengue incidence in Brazil: spatio-temporal modelling using a Bayesian approach Submitted to PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, March 22, 2026, under review (awaiting a decision)
Nightingale, G., Okeleye, E., Seaton, A., Villejo, S., Brondi, L., Rydzewska-Fazekas, E., Oliveira de Moura, N., Henriques, C. & Giorgi, E., Global Spatiotemporal Epidemiology: https://hiss-r-resources.shinyapps.io/apple/ 10 Jul 2025 (to be expanded to include more countries and collaborators)
Glenna Nightingale, Karthik Mohan, Eloi Ribe, Valentin Popov, Shakes Wang, Clara Calia, Luciana Brondi, and Sohan Seth,Modeling mental health trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic using UK-wide data in the
presence of sociodemographic variables; submitted to PLOS ONE, under review.
Glenna Nightingale, Karthik Mohan, John Frank, Sarah Wild, Sohan Seth, Sociodemographic and early-life
predictors of obesity in a middle-aged UK population– a retrospective cohort study of the 1958 National Child
Development Survey participants; 26 March, 2025, PLOS ONE Public Health
Garth Reid, Glenna Nightingale, Nason Maani, Mike Smith, Mark Petticrew: Addressing challenges in reviewing e-cigarette evidence: proposing a new ‘Test for Dominance’ in systematic reviews: Journal of Public Health journal, accepted Sept 2025
Kokka, K. K., Nightingale, G., Williams, A. J., Abbas, A., Popov, V., Sharp, S., Hunter, R. F., Jepson, R. & Woodcock, J., The effect of 20mph speed limits on traffic injuries in Edinburgh, UK: A natural experiment and modelling study, 19 Mar 2024, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
Claire L. Cleland, Andrew J. Williams, Frank Kee, Ruth Jepson, Michael P Kelly , Karen Milton, Glenna Nightingale, Andy Cope, Ruth F. Hunter Can 20mph speed limit interventions influence liveability? A natural experiment using the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes Liveability (MAPS-Liveability) and Google Street View. 2024 Journal of Transport & Health
Nightingale, G, 2024: R Recipes: https://thestatsclinic.shinyapps.io/R-Recipes-Nightingale/
Jennifer Kirsty Burton, Megan McMinn, James E Vaughan, Glenna Nightingale, Jacques Fleuriot, Bruce Guthrie, Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on Scotland’s care-homes from March 2020 to October 2021: national linked data cohort analysis, Age and Ageing, 2024: https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afae015
Laxton Megan, Nightingale Glenna, Lindgren Finn, Sivakumaran Arjuna, Othieno Richard, Extending the R number by applying hyperparameters of Log Gaussian Cox process models in an epidemiological context to provide insights into COVID-19 positivity in the City of Edinburgh and in students residing at Edinburgh University, PLOS ONE, 2023 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291348.
Ailsa Niven, G. Baker, E. Coral-Almeida, S. G. Fawkner, Ruth Jepson, J. Manner , S Morton, G. Nightingale, D. Sivaramakrishnan, “Are we working (too) comfortably?”: Understanding the nature of and factorsassociated with sedentary behaviour when working in the home environment Occupational Health Science 2023
Point-pattern-diaries-with R: https://thestatsclinic.shinyapps.io/point-pattern-analyses-an-introduction/#section-point-pattern-secondary-characteristics Nightingale G 2023
Working-with-data-diaries interactive basics with R: https://thestatsclinic.shinyapps.io/working-with-data-diaries/#section-data Nightingale G 2023
R Tutorial on modelling vaccine stance based on survey data
https://rpubs.com/loggaussian/R-vaccine-stance
Panas, D., Nightingale, G., Ayanore, M., King-Okoye, M., Blundy, L. & Seth, S., 2 Dec 2022
Jepson R, Baker G, Cleland C, Cope A, Craig N, Foster C, Hunter R, Kee F, Kelly MP, Kelly P, Milton K, Nightingale G, Turner K, Williams AJ, Woodcock J. Developing and implementing 20-mph speed limits in Edinburgh and Belfast: mixed-methods study. Southampton (UK): National Institute for Health and Care Research; 2022 Sep. PMID: 36173872.
Ruth F. Hunter, Claire L. Cleland, John Busby, Glenna Nightingale, Frank Kee, Andrew J. Williams, Paul Kelly, Michael P. Kelly, Karen Milton, Kelly Kokka, Ruth Jepson, Investigating the impact of a 20mph speed limit intervention on road traffic collisions, casualties, speed and volume in Belfast, United Kingdom: 3 year follow-up outcomes of a natural experiment (October 1st 2022, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health)
Sidra Ishfaq, Abedullah Anjum, Shahzad Kouser, Ruth Jepson, Glenna Nightingale, The relationship between women’s empowerment and household food and nutrition security in Pakistan
PLOS ONE (accepted for publication, September 2022)
Glenna Nightingale, Megan Laxton, Janine B. Illian, How does the community COVID-19 level of risk impact on that of a care home? December 31st, 2021, PLOS ONE
Glenna F. Nightingale, Andrew James Williams, Ruth F. Hunter, James Woodcock, Kieran Turner, Claire L. Cleland, Graham Baker, Michael Kelly, Andy Cope, Frank Kee, Karen Milton, Charlie Foster, Ruth Jepson, Paul Kelly. Evaluating the citywide Edinburgh 20mph speed limit intervention effects on traffic speed and volume: A pre-post observational evaluation' December 31st 2021, PLOS ONE
Williams, Andrew James, Jillian Manner, Glenna Nightingale, Kieran Turner, Paul Kelly, Graham Baker, Claire Cleland, Ruth Hunter, and Ruth Jepson. "Public attitudes to, and perceived impacts of 20mph (32 km/h) speed limits in Edinburgh: An exploratory study using the Speed Limits Perceptions Survey (SLiPS)." Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour 84 (2022): 99-113.
Claire L. Cleland , Sara Ferguson, Frank Kee, Paul Kelly, Andrew James Williams, Glenna Nightingale, Andy Cope, Charlie Foster, Karen Milton, Michael P. Kelly, Ruth Jepson, Ruth F. Hunter . Adaptation and testing of a microscale audit tool to assess liveability using google street view: MAPS-liveability. July 24, 2021, Journal of Transport and Health
Glenna Nightingale, Megan Laxton, Janine B Illian 2021, How does the community COVID-19 level of risk impact on that of a care home? PLOS ONE
Karen Milton, Michael P. Kelly, Graham Baker, Claire Cleland, Andy Cope, Neil Craig, Charlie Foster, Ruth Hunter, Frank Kee, Paul Kelly, Glenna Nightingale, Kieran Turner, Andrew James Williams, James Woodcock, Ruth Jepson. Use of natural experimental studies to evaluate 20mph speed limits in two major UK cities. September 2021, Journal of Transport and Health
Claire Cleland, Graham Baker, Kieran Turner, Ruth Jepson, Frank Kee, Karen Milton, Michael P. Kelly, Glenna Nightingale, Ruth F. Hunter. A qualitative exploration of the mechanisms, pathways and public health outcomes of a city centre 20mph speed limit intervention: The case of Belfast, United Kingdom 21 July 2021, Journal of Health and Place
Popov V.M, Nightingale G., Williams A.J., Kelly P., Jepson R., Milton K., and Kelly M. Trend shifts in road traffic collisions An application of Hidden Markov Models and Generalised Additive Models to assess the impact of the 20mph speed limit policy in Edinburgh January 2021 Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science)
GF Nightingale, AJ Williams, J Woodcock, P Kelly, K Kokka, A Abbas, R Jepson,2020, OP90 An evaluation of the impact of the 20mph speed limits in the City of Edinburgh on road traffic casualty and collision rates, J Epidemiol Community Health, Vol 74, Issue Suppl 1, BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
Glenna F. Nightingale, Paul Kelly, Andrew James Williams, Ruth F Hunter, James Woodcock, Kieran Turner, Claire L Cleland, Graham Baker, Mike Kelly, Andy Cope, Frank Kee ,Karen Milton, Charlie Foster, Ruth Jepson An evaluation of changes in traffic speed and volume following 20mph (30kmph) speed limits intervention, Journal of Transportation, submitted under review (November 2020)
Nightingale G.F.,2020, Applying "zones of influence" to social distancing in schools, Royal Statistical Society Significance, https://www.significancemagazine.com/science/677-applying-zones-of-influence-to-social-distancing-in-schools
Nightingale G. F., Illian J. B., King R., and Nightingale P., September 2019. Area Interaction Point Processes for Bivariate Point Patterns in a Bayesian Context, Journal of Environmental Statistics, vol 9, no 2
Cleland, C. L., McComb, K., Kee, F., Jepson, R., Kelly, M., Milton, K., Nightingale, G., Kelly, P., Baker, G., Craig, N., Williams, A. & Hunter, R. F. October 2019. Effects of 20mph interventions on a range of public health outcomes: A meta-narrative evidence synthesis , Journal of Transport & Health
McCollum, D., Liu, Y., Findlay, A. M., Feng, Z. & Nightingale, G. 30 Jan 2018, Determinants of occupational mobility: the importance of place of work, Regional Studies.
Findlay, A. M., Packwood, H., McCollum, D., Nightingale, G. & Tindal, S. 11 Dec 2017 , Fees, flows and imaginaries: exploring destination choices arising from intra-national student mobility, Globalisation, Societies and Education.
Nightingale G. F, McCollum D., Finney N., Ernsten, A. 2017. Ethnic variations in internal migration in the UK, 2009-2015. CPC Briefing Paper 38. ESRC Center for Population Change, UK.
Nightingale G. F. 2016. R package edgeCorr.
Nightingale G. F., Illian J. B. and King R. 2015. Pairwise Interaction Point Processes for Modelling Bivariate Spatial Point Patterns in the Presence of Interaction Uncertainty. Journal of Environmental Statistics
Nightingale GF, Laland KN, Hoppitt W, Nightingale P.2015. Bayesian Spatial NBDA for Diffusion Data with Home-Base Coordinates. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130326. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130326
Nightingale GF., Nightingale P. 2015 SocialNetworks R Package.
Nightingale G, Boogert N, Hoppitt W and Laland KN. 2014. Quantifying diffusion in social networks: a Bayesian approach In book: Animal Social Networks, Chapter: 5, Publisher: Oxford University Press
Boogert N, Nightingale G.F., Hoppitt W and Laland KN. 2014. Perching but not foraging networks predict the spread of novel foraging skills in starlings. Behavioural Processes, Vol 109, pp 135-144
Nightingale G.F. 2014. R package spatialnbda.
Gent I. P, Hussain B. S, Jefferson C., Kotthoff L., Miguel I., Nightingale G.F., and Nightingale P. 2014. Discriminating Instance Generation for Automated Constraint Model Selection. Conference paper in Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP)
King R ., Illian J. B. , King S .E. , Nightingale G. F. & Hendrichsen D. 2012 , ' A Bayesian approach to fitting Gibbs processes with temporal random effects ' Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics , vol 17 , no. 4 , pp. 601-622
PhD thesis: Bayesian point process modelling of ecological communities
Blog posts: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/blog/do-20mph-speed-limits-affect-levels-physical-activity
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/blogs/is-twenty-plenty-a-tale-of-two-uk-cities/8404
DATASETS
I have experience in using point pattern data and longitudinal datasets such as the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data, the UK Household Panel Survey the British Cohort Study (BCS), and the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) data. I also have experience in analysing time to event, spatiotemporal, and survey data.