As an Associate Dean, I am supporting the Dean of the Brighton Business School in the development, implementation and monitoring of the School Research and Enterprise plan. I am also working with colleagues on publications, proposals and collaborations within the university and with external partners as well as career development in research.

In my own research as an applied economist, I am focusing on returns to education investment in a time of accelerated technical and demographic change. Using large-scale data, this work investigates the earnings and employment outcomes of vocational education and apprenticeships for young people as well as labour market retraining for people in adult life. My main motivation is to understand how education and skills in these areas can be improved, so that people work in well-paid and highly productive jobs, which will help reduce earnings inequality and social inequality more widely, for a fairer society.

Most of my work has been published in scientific journals, discussion papers and government reports. A complete list of my research publications can be found on Google Scholar:https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=MeWDVYYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

I am interested to supervise students with research topics in welfare policies, education and the labour market, and effectiveness of policy and programmes.  Here, I have a specific interest in computationally efficient algorithms to improve econometric designs, which improve robustness of applied econometric analysis.  Related to this is the use of innovative, large data sources (“Big Data”) in econometrics, where I can support students gaining proficiency using relevant methodical and technical approaches.

Before joining the University of Brighton, I was working as an Associate Director at the National Institute of Economics and Social Research (London), where I was leading a research team specialised in education and labour economics.  Previous positions included both academic departments (Berlin, Mannheim, Dresden, Westminster) and multi-disciplinary research organisations like the Berlin Social Science Center, the Policy Studies Institute (London) and the Institute for Employment Studies (Brighton).

My background is interdisciplinary with a Ph.D. in economics (University of Mannheim, 2004), specialising in micro-econometric methods, and an M.A. Political Science (Dipl.-Pol.) from the Free University of Berlin (1996).

In my applied research and knowledge exchange activity, I have been working on multi-year programmes analysing linked register data of millions of people from different Government Departments to understand how people decide about education and how policy can help increase skills and productivity in the economy and improve social mobility.  My work in recent years also helped charities offering youth employment support to understand the effectiveness of their programmes by creating benchmarks based on my research. 

I can offer consultancy and training on regression modelling, micro econometric methods, experimental and non-experimental impact analysis, time series methods and forecasting as well as “Big Data”, which can be applied to inform a wide range of decisions in business and government.