Dr. Nicola Pensiero
Lecturer in Quantitative Education and Social Science
Nicola(Nic) Pensiero is a lecturer in quantitative education and social science at Southampton University School of Education.
Previously he 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.
His current research includes studies on the role of individual decision-making mechanisms in shaping educational inequality by social origins and school segregation. He is also conducting a cross-national study on the effect of upper secondary education system characteristics on skills levels and inequality. In the UK he is conducting a study on the effect of tracking on political engagement.
His research on income inequality has a political economy approach and focuses on the distributional consequences of privatisation of public services, labour relations and technological innovation.