Student politics and higher education
I am currently leading an ESRC-funded project entitled ‘Does Higher Education Politicise Today’s Students?’. The research, conducted in collaboration with Rille Raaper and Tom Fryer, will track undergraduates at four UK universities over the course of their studies to examine the impact, if any, of higher education on their political knowledge, views and behaviour. This develops some themes about students as political actors from my recently-completed European Research Council project on conceptualisations of higher education students across Europe, and earlier work, funded by the National Union of Students, on the changing nature of UK students’ unions.
International student mobilities
Over the past two decades, Johanna Waters and I have conducted a wide variety of research projects on different aspects of international student mobilities and processes of internationalisation in higher education more broadly. Our recent publications in this area include Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities. Our current research focuses on the UK’s Turing Scheme, and an exploration of the ways in which the concept of ‘the international’ is understood in scholarship on student migration. We are in the final stages of writing a book, entitled Post-Brexit Educational Mobilities, for Policy Press. I am also part of an international team examining virtual mobilities through an Open Research Area-funded project.
I have recently guest-edited a special issue of Higher Education on contemporary challenges to international student mobility in Europe and, as part of the ESRC-funded Centre for Global Higher Education, written about intra-European student mobility and the spatial imaginaries facilitated through the European Universities Initiative.
Equity and higher education
I am also interested in how we can make access to, and outcomes from, higher education more equitable. I am currently leading a Sutton Trust-funded project on ‘Intergenerational Mobility and Higher Education Internationally’ which is examining policies to more effectively promote social mobility through higher education.
Other recent work in this area has included research for TASO on widening participation to sandwich courses, in which we identified various temporal challenges as well as a lack of reliable institutional data.
Caring practices
I have conducted research on caring practices – in relation to education – and amongst families in general. I have published Student Carers in Higher Education, with Marie-Pierre Moreau and Genine Hook and, with Paul Hodkinson, am running a longitudinal study of UK fathers who are equal or primary carers for young children, examining how their practices have changed over time, particularly as their children have started school. This builds on our previous work on Sharing Care: Equal and Primary Carer Fathers and Early Years Parenting.
Changes in young people’s lives over time
Finally, I am an international partner on an Australian Research Council-funded project, ‘Life Patterns’ which has been exploring the lives young Australians since the 1990s. This is led by Johanna Wyn at the University of Melbourne. As part of this project, I have published on parenting practices with respect to children in higher education, and the gendering of work-life balance.