Halsey Lecture 2025: What is a student? Perspectives from across Europe | Professor Rachel Brooks

Описание: The Annual Halsey Lecture is a lecture series celebrating excellence in sociology and the wider social sciences, named in honour of Professor Albert Henry Halsey, a central figure in the sociology of education.

About the lecture:
Assumptions are often made within policy, as well as by academics, that what it means to be a higher education (HE) student in Europe today is common across nation-states – driven by the increase in cross-border educational mobility, the development of a European Higher Education Area, and the widespread impact of marketisation and expansion of higher education. Nevertheless, cross-national empirical evidence is rarely cited in support of such assumptions.

To address this gap, I have conducted research in six European nations (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain) about how the contemporary HE student is conceptualised – drawing on perspectives from policy, the media and HE staff, as well as students themselves.

In this talk, I will outline some key constructions of students that emerged from the project. I will then examine the extent to which dominant constructions across and within nation-states are similar, engaging with the debates about the degree of homogenisation of HE across Europe, and the extent to which nation-states can be considered ‘coherent educational entities’.

I will suggest that there are also other important axes of difference to consider – beyond national boundaries and type of social actors – related notably to academic discipline, HE institution, and students’ social background. Finally, I will explore the impact of constructions, maintaining that they are not merely of academic interest, but have direct and material effects.

About Professor Rachel Brooks:
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 has been a member of governing council of the Economic and Social Research Council, and the education sub-panel for the UK’s national research assessment exercise (REF2021).