Lyudmila Nurse is a sociologist with over 25 years of experience of research into social institutions, education, culture and identities. Her current research interests are:
- Cultural diversity
- Education (both formal and informal) and families
- Cultural reproduction
- Identities and belonging
- Identities and music
- Biographical research methods
- Mixed research methods
In the Department of Education, she is a Research fellow. She works for the H2020 ISOTIS: Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society project. She leads a qualitative study of mothers with pre-school and primary school children from low-income families in two metropolitan areas of England: Greater London and Merseyside. She also coordinates comparative qualitative study of mothers from low-income families, families with immigrant background and ethnic minority background in ten EU countries: Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Portugal.
Her experience includes coordination of large-scale international multi-disciplinary research projects funded by the European research agencies. Previous projects include qualitative and biographical studies in European identity :“ENRI-East: European, National and Regional Identities ” (EC FP7) and “United States of Europe” (EC Culture Programme) in which she worked on the analysis of families’ cultural reproduction, identities of ethnic minorities; identities and music, inter-generational comparative analysis. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She studied Modern Sociology on a post-doctoral summer Sociological school at the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester. She has been a visiting research fellow at Universities of Edinburgh, Warwick, City (London) and the Institute of Education, London. Between 1994 and 2009, she worked as an international social development consultant and from 1999 was a Director for Social development of Hart group. Her international consultancy related to social development, poverty alleviation, policy evaluation and monitoring. From 2006, she was Research Director of Oxford XXI, a think tank and innovative research organisation that she co-founded.