Francesca Little is an Emeritus Professor in Statistical Sciences at the University of Cape Town and a senior statistician in Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She specialises in the statistical analysis of data from the Health and Social Sciences. Her research activities originate from her collaboration with the Health Sciences, predominantly in the areas of infectious diseases, including analysis of data from Immunology, Brain Imaging, implementation studies and the analysis of longitudinal data from birth cohorts. Her statistical methodological topics of interest include linear and nonlinear mixed effect modelling, analysis of time to event outcomes, longitudinal studies with missing data, growth curve modelling and latent class modelling. 

Her postgraduate supervision record includes 4 ongoing, 6 graduated doctoral students and 29 graduated masters students. At UCT she developed and lectured several modules on the Masters of Science program, specialising in Biostatistics, in addition to undergraduate lectures in Statistical Modelling. At Oxford university she is involved in MSc-level teaching modules of the Evidence Based Health Care programme.