About
Dr Nicola (Nic) Pensiero is an Associate Professor in Quantitative Education and Social Science at Southampton Education School at the University of Southampton.
Nic is happy to supervise motivated PhD researchers with projects on education and social stratification using theoretical and/or methodological innovative approaches, including:
- Evaluation of education and social policy
- Educational choices
- Comparative studies of education system characteristics
- Big data and machine learning in education
- Experimental, agent-based and randomised studies
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Educational inequalities
- Social stratification
- Social Theory
- Political economy
Current research
Nic's current research includes studies on
- Impact of COVID-19 on educational inequalites in the UK.
- The role of individual decision-making mechanisms in shaping educational inequality by social origins and school segregation.
- Effect of education on political socialisation.
- Effect of upper secondary education system characteristics on skills levels and inequality.
- The political economy of income inequality with a focus on the distributional consequences of privatisation of public services, labour relations and technological innovation.
Research projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
Nic has taught on a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate modules.
Biography
Nicola (Nic) Pensiero is an Associate Professor in Quantitative Education and Social Science at Southampton Education School at the University of Southampton.
Previously, Nic worked at UCL Institute of Education, where he joined in 2013 after completing his PhD at the European University Institute. He is an interdisciplinary researcher with a good record of leading externally funded education research projects. His expertise lies in the use of analytical and choice-based approaches in studying social phenomena such as education programme effectiveness, comparative analysis of the effectiveness of education system characteristics, inequality in educational attainment, school segregation and income inequality.
From a working class background, I have always been interested in abstract ideas. I am grateful to the italian welfare state for the opportunity to study in a very good lyceum and attend university with bursary.