Vikki Boliver is Lecturer in Sociology / Social Policy in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University. Vikki joined the School in September 2011. Before coming to Durham, Vikki studied Sociology at Leicester University (BA), Cambridge University (MPhil) and Oxford University (DPhil) and was a Departmental Lecturer in Sociology at Oxford, a Nuffield Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Harvard, a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford, and a Sociology Lecturer at Bath Spa. At Durham Vikki teaches the first year undergraduate research methods module, Discovering Society, and the masters level module, Quantitative Research Methods in Sociology and Social Policy.

Vikki's current research focuses on social inequalities of access to higher status universities, and on patterns and processes of social mobility across multiple generations. She welcomes enquiries about supervision from students who want to write an undergraduate, masters or doctoral dissertation on something to do with educational inequality or social mobility, or who are keen to use quantitative research methods, or who simply have a sociologically interesting research question that they are itching to investigate.

Vikki Boliver was on the panel of Equality, Equity and the dispossessed at The Great Debate: Whatever Happened to Equality? in November 2012.

Boliver, V. and Swift, A. (2011) 'Do comprehensive schools reduce social mobility?' British Journal of Sociology 62(1): 89-110

Boliver, V. (2011) 'Expansion, differentiation and the persistence of social class inequalities in British higher education' Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education Research 61(3): 229-242.

Journal papers: general audience

Boliver, V. and Swift, A. (2011) 'Comprehensive schools and social mobility'. Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy

Books: sections

Waters, M., Heath, A., Butterfield, S., Boliver, V., and Gonzalez, M. (Forthcoming) 'The educational careers of the children of immigrants in Britain and the USA.' in Alba, R. and Holdaway, J. (Eds.) The Integration Imperative: The Children of Third-World Immigrants in the Schools of the U.S. and Western Europe. New York: CUNY.

Working papers: academic

Chan, T.W. and Boliver, V. (2011) 'Social mobility over three generations in Britain.' Sociology Working Paper no. 2011-04, Oxford University.

Boliver, V. (2010) 'Maximally maintained inequality and effectively maintained inequality in education: operationalizing the expansion-inequality relationship.' Sociology Working Paper no. 2010-05, Oxford University.

Boliver, V. (2006) 'Social inequalities of access to higher status universities in the UK: the role of university admissions decisions' in Sociology Working Paper no. 2006-07, Oxford University.

Boliver, V. (2004) 'Widening participation and fair access at the University of Oxford' in Sociology Working Paper no. 2004-02, Sociology Department, Oxford University.

Conference papers

Boliver, V. 'How fair is access to prestigious UK universities?' Paper presented at the Institute for Social Change seminar, Manchester University, 27th September 2011.

Boliver, V. 'Qualitative inequalities in further and higher education in England'. Paper presented at the International Sociological Association RC28 conference in Iowa City, Iowa, USA, August 2011.

Boliver, V. 'Recent trends in access to more prestigious universities'. Paper presented at the Fair Admissions conference, Manchester, UK, July 2011.

Boliver, V. 'Recent trends in class and ethnic inequalities of access to prestigious universities in the UK'. Paper presented at a conference to celebrate the work of Anthony Heath, Oxford, UK, April 2011.

Boliver, V. 'Persistent social inequalities of access to higher status universities: An analysis of UCAS data for 1996-2006'. Draft report, February 2011.

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