Rachel Brooks

Professor of Higher Education | Linacre College

About me

Professor Rachel Brooks is Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Education at Oxford and current President of the British Sociological Association.

She is also chair of the executive editors of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, a member of the editorial team of the journal Sociology, and co-editor of the ‘Research into Higher Education’ book series, published by Routledge and the Society for Research into Higher Education. She is a member of governing council of the Economic and Social Research Council, and was a member of the education sub-panel for the UK’s national research assessment exercise (REF2021).

Rachel’s research focuses primarily on the sociology of higher education. Particular areas of expertise include international student mobility (and processes of internationalisation and Europeanisation in higher education more generally); student politics and protest; and ensuring equity in access to and outcomes within higher education.

Rachel has recently moved to Oxford from the University of Surrey where she held a variety of management roles (including head of department and associate dean for research) and was principal investigator of the university’s ESRC-funded Impact Acceleration Account.

 

Current Projects
  • Post-Brexit Educational Mobilities: Rachel is writing a book with Johanna Waters on how international student mobilities have been affected by the UK’s departure from the European Union. This builds on previous work on student mobilities funded by, amongst others, the ESRC and British Academy.
  • Young People Shaping Livelihoods Across Three Generations: Rachel is an international partner on this Australian Research Council-funded longitudinal study (led by the University of Melbourne) of the lives of three cohorts of Australians.

 

Recently completed projects:
  • Constructing the Higher Education Student (EUROSTUDENTS): This six-year project, funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant, examined the ways in which higher education students are understood across Europe, exploring differences by both nation state and social actor.
  • Widening Participation to Sandwich Courses: This project, funded by the Centre for Transforming Access to and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) explored the barriers faced by students from non-traditional backgrounds in accessing, and succeeding on, work-focussed ‘sandwich courses’ in English higher education.
  • The Supra-National Higher Education Space: This project was part of the ESRC-funded Centre for Global Higher Education (led by the University of Oxford). Rachel’s contribution focused largely on the European higher education space, examining the growth of the European Universities Initiative, and the response of European higher education actors to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
  • Caring practices:Rachel has conducted research on higher education students with caring responsibilities (funded by the Nuffield Foundation), and also on fathers who are the primary carers of young children. Both areas of work have led to recently-published books.

 

Subjects Taught

  • MSc Education (Higher Education): Higher Education Systems, Structures and Institutions