Welcome!

I teach Sociology and Human Sciences at Oxford University, where I am the head of the Department of Sociology, a fellow and tutor of New College, and the director of the Oxford Network for Social Inequality Research. My research interests are social stratification and mobility, and the life course, especially family formation and dissolution.

Research Projects

Draft Papers

comments very welcome, but please do not cite or quote without permission.

Intergenerational exchange of instrumental support: dynamic evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (with John Ermisch)
Social mobility over three generations in Britain (with Vikki Boliver)
Intergenerational exchange in the UK
The instability of divorce risk factors in the UK (with Brendan Halpin)
Demographic trends and educational homogamy in Britain
Why we should not be postmodernists

Publications

Social status in Norway
(with Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, Arne Kristian Aas and Øyvind Wiborg, European Sociological Review, 2011, 27:451--468.)
Parenting style and youth outcomes in the UK
(with Anita Koo, European Sociological Review, 2011, 27:385--399.)
Social Status and Cultural Consumption
(2010, Cambridge University Press, table of content, sample introductory chapter)
The social stratification of cultural consumption: some policy implications of a research project
(with John H Goldthorpe, Cultural Trends, 2007, 16:373--384.)
Data, methods and interpretation in analyses of cultural consumption: a reply to Peterson and Wuggenig
(with John H Goldthorpe, Poetics, 2007, 35:317--329.)
Class and status: the conceptual distinction and its empirical relevance
(with John H Goldthorpe, American Sociological Review, 2007, 72:512--532.)
Social stratification and cultural consumption: the visual arts in England
(with John H Goldthorpe, Poetics, 2007, 35:168--190. See also the special issue of which this paper is a part.)
Social stratification and cultural consumption: music in England
(with John H Goldthorpe, European Sociological Review, 2007, 23:1--29.)
Social status and newspaper readership
(with John H Goldthorpe, American Journal of Sociology, 2007, 112:1095--1134.)
Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Normative and empirical considerations
(with Matthew Clayton, Political Studies, 2006, 54:533--538.)
The social stratification of theatre, dance and cinema attendance
(with John H Goldthorpe, Cultural Trends, 2005, 14:193--212.)
Is there a status order in contemporary British society? Evidence from the cccupational structure of friendship
(with John H Goldthorpe, European Sociological Review, 2004, 20:383--401.)
Educational homogamy in Ireland and Britain: Trends and patterns
(with Brendan Halpin, British Journal of Sociology, 2003, 54:473--495.)
Who marries whom in Great Britain?
(with Brendan Halpin, in Who Marries Whom: Educational Systems As Marriage Markets in Modern Societies, edited by H-P. Blossfeld and A. Timm, 2003, Kluwer.)
Union dissolution in the UK
(with Brendan Halpin, International Journal of Sociology, 2002, 32:76--93.)
Revolving doors re-examined: occupational sex segregation over the life course,
American Sociological Review, 1999, 64:86-96.
Class careers as sequences: an optimal matching analysis of work-life histories,
(with Brendan Halpin, European Sociological Review, 1998, 14:111-130.)
Optimal matching analysis: a methodological note on studying career mobility,
(Work and Occupations, 1995, 22:467-490.)
A comparative analysis of social mobility in Hong Kong,
(with T.L. Lui and T.W.P. Wong, European Sociological Review, 1995, 11:135-155.)

Other publications

Social status in Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture, edited by Dale Southerton, 2011, Sage.
A joint report with Arts Council England From indifference to enthusiasm: patterns of arts attendance in England
(with Catherine Bunting, John Goldthorpe, Emily Keaney and Anni Oskala)
A second report with Arts Council England Encourage children today to build audiences for tomorrow
(with Anni Oskala, Emily Keaney and Catherine Bunting)
Optimal matching analysis Social Research Update, issue 24, spring 1999.