Bath Global Chair 2020-2021: Prof. Heike Solga

A world-leading expert in education and labour market outcomes, Professor Heike Solga is Director of the research unit ‘Skill Formation and Labor Markets’ at the prestigious WZB – Berlin Social Science Center. She is also a Professor in Sociology at FU Berlin.

Hosted at Bath by Professor Hugh Lauder (Education) and Professor Lynn Prince Cooke (Social & Policy Sciences), Professor Solga’s Global Chair builds on existing links with the WZB, where Professor Cooke is currently a Research Fellow. Professor Solga is one of the world’s foremost and innovative researchers into ‘marginalised’ educational populations and educational disadvantage, with a particular interest in vocational training and its impact on social mobility and career trajectories. She is currently also leading a project on education inequality around university admissions in Germany. Her scholarship speaks closely to the ethos and ambitions of social science research at Bath and echoes our University-wide priorities around widening participation, and her Global Chair will not only create new collaborative research across the Departments of Education and Social & Policy Sciences, and the Institute for Policy Research, but will also provide new training opportunities for our doctoral students and early-career researchers, including in quantitative, experimental and interdisciplinary education research design.

Professor Solga's appointment will provide an invaluable platform for our University’s high-profile research in social justice, education policy, and widening participation. As we emerge from the current pandemic, the relationship between education, the labour market, and social policy is likely to lead to a major debate across Europe as to how they should be reconfigured. Professor Solga’s Global Chair and the partnership with WZB will allow us to raise further the profile of our cutting-edge scholarship in this field.

The Global Chair scheme is funded by the International Relations Office at the University of Bath to build high-profile research collaborations and enhance strategic networks with universities and research institutes overseas.