Lectio Magistralis - professor Richard Breen

3.30 PM
Venue: Aula Kessler, Department of Sociology and Social Research

• Lectio Magistralis Richard Breen - Professor of Sociology and Fellow of Nuffield College, University of Oxford
  "Education and Social Mobility in the 20^th Century"

The study of intergenerational social mobility is a core topic in Sociology. Recent research documents temporal change in social mobility, and particularly in what sociologists call social fluidity.  Social fluidity increased in several countries at various points in the 20th century and this was driven by cohort replacement.  Furthermore, cohort trends in social fluidity quite closely match cohort trends in educational expansion and equalization, suggesting that education has been an important driver of social fluidity. The lectio will present the recent results of an internationally comparative research project on the ink between education and changes in social fluidity.

Richard Breen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxforf and Fellow of Nuffield College.
He returned to Oxford in July 2015 following almost 9 years at Yale University where he was the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology and, latterly, chair of the Yale Sociology Department.
At Yale he also directed the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course. He has been an Official Fellow of Nuffield College (2001-2006), and Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute (1997-2001) and at Queen's University, Belfast (1991-97).
He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Member of the Academia Europaea.