My Week is part of a new occasional blog series to give you insights into what we do here at Centre For Thriving Places, and also what our team members do alongside work to feed their own wellbeing. This week we hear from Nerissa Schuit, our Data & Analytics Engineer.

Things I’ve been working on

This week has been a deep dive into the moving pieces behind our 2026 Thriving Places Index launch – a satisfying mix of data wrangling, process automation and analysis. I’ve been cleaning, transforming and loading data with Python (a programming language that helps you tell the computer what to do with data), then switching to R (another tool that makes it easier to explore and understand data through analysis and graphs) for the analysis that will feed into our upcoming short reports.

I’ve also been writing the documentation and audit trail that sits behind all of it. It’s not the flashiest task, but it’s grounding to map out the data ecosystem as it develops.

Another big focus was further analysis for our safety short report, which led me into the Crime Survey’s guidance on confidentiality and data security. I still feel new to the political–policy–data intersection, and it can be overwhelming how much sits behind a single dataset. Coming from a science background, qualitative datasets still take a bit of recalibration – but I’m learning that the nuances reveal themselves when needed.

Things I’ve been reading / listening to

Somewhere between meetings this week, we clocked a quiet but important shift in how we measure inflation. The ONS is moving away from re-measuring the same small set of prices and instead using real supermarket checkout data – millions of actual transactions, reflecting what people really buy and what they really pay.

A reminder that progress often comes not from measuring the same things more carefully, but from choosing better things to measure in the first place.

A technical highlight this week was a Substack piece on building a correlation matrix in Power BI using only DAX. PowerBI is a tool that helps you turn data into a visual reports and dashboards, one way to interact with it is through it’s button functionalities, the other is through DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), a language inside PowerBI that lets you be more specific or custom with what you ask PowerBI to do. It sparked ideas about more interactive ways of visualising relationships – ideally something node-based where selecting one variable highlights the others it connects to. I’m still exploring whether that’s best achieved in Power BI or R.

I also fell into a Reddit thread about data engineering tests – part cautionary tale, part reminder that I need to write more of them.

My colleague Jo pointed me towards Louisa Munch Theory, the Tik Tok and Instagram sensation, an academic who applies the technique of critical theory and deep questioning to events on the world stage. which led me to a conversation between Louisa and Dr Myriam Francois about systemic inequality and media narratives, centred on the idea that shifting the focus from migration to wealth inequality is key to real change. It’s been a nice background companion while working.

I’ve also been reading ‘The Magic Ten’ by Sharon Gannon. Its emphasis on simple grounding practices, particularly gratitude and sending blessings, consistently helps recalibrate my mindset – which feels especially needed when everything around us feels heightened.

Things I’ve been doing for balance

I’ve been making a conscious effort to add walks into my routine, even in unpredictable weather. It’s a quick reset that breaks up long stretches of screen-time.

I’ve been teaching and attending a lot of yoga classes this week and preparing for a continuing education teacher training I’ll be doing over the next few months. Yoga has been a nice anchor amidst all the data work, giving structure and a bit of calm to the week.

I’ve also been giving myself short pauses – sometimes just five quiet minutes lying down – to keep overstimulation in check.

And I’m leaning into what I know works: deep-work blocks for coding in the early part of the day, when my focus is sharpest, and lighter admin in the afternoon when energy naturally dips.