Head of the School of Education

I am a sociologist with expertise in social class inequalities in education and young people’s transitions to work. My research has focussed on the North of Ireland; England; and Europe more generally and is underpinned by a Bourdieusian theoretical approach. My books include Working Class Boys and Educational Success: Teenage Identities Masculinities and Urban Schooling (Palgrave MacMillan); Higher Education, Social Class and Social Mobility (Palgrave Macmillan); and Educational Choices, Transitions and Aspirations in Europe (Routledge). My most recent book The Degree Generation: the Making of Unequal Graduate Lives (Bristol University Press) was published in 2023 and focuses on educational policy and the reality of graduate lives. I am on the Board of Trustees of the British Sociological Association and am an editorial board member of Sociology, Critical Studies in Education, and the British Journal of Sociology of Education. I am the academic chair of the Network for Evaluating and Researching University Participation Interventions (NERUPI) and am keen to develop strong links between policy, research and practice. I am originally from Belfast and have spent most of my academic career in England after gaining a PhD from Queen’s University, Belfast. Prior to joining UCC I worked at Manchester Metropolitan University where I was the director of the Education and Social Research Institute.