Cristina Iannelli

Professor Cristina Iannelli holds the Personal Chair of Education and Social Stratification at the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education and Sport, affiliated with the Institute for Education, Community & Society (IECS). She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences. Her research focuses on social stratification in education and labor markets, social mobility, youth transitions, and quantitative data analysis. She has led major international projects like the ESRC-funded ‘Understanding Inequalities’ (2017-2021) and previously co-directed the ESRC Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN). Key contributions include analyzing educational policies, intergenerational mobility, and curriculum impacts on inequality.

Her educational background includes a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) and prior roles as a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She has supervised 14 PhD students across topics like educational inequality, policy analysis, and labor market transitions. Awards include ESRC research fellowships for projects on educational structure and social mobility.

Recent work highlights include analyzing sibling data to study intergenerational transmission of advantage, cross-country comparisons of STEM enrollment disparities, and the role of spatial job opportunities in labor market outcomes. She chairs the European Research Network on Transitions in Youth (TIY) and advises ESRC’s Data and Infrastructure Expert Group.