Professor Bryony Hoskins

Professor Bryony Hoskins has a chair in Comparative Social Science at the University of Roehampton. A leading authority on political socialisation and democratic resilience, her research focuses on how inequalities shape political engagement and on designing and rigorously testing educational interventions to reduce those gaps. 

She has deep expertise in measurement and assessment, especially for Life Skills and Citizenship Education across Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. Professor Hoskins has led major European research, including in G-EPIC, the development and testing of interventions to boost the political confidence of disadvantaged girls, and within STRIDE, a longitudinal analysis of education reforms.

In the MENA region she has led the quality assurance for the development and piloting of instruments measuring life skills in Egypt, Palestine and Tunisia. Her work combines methodologically robust measurement with applied intervention design to strengthen inclusive civic learning and participation. Her latest book is on Education, Democracy and Inequality: Political Engagement and Citizenship Education in Europe and is published by Palgrave Macmillan. 

Professor Hoskins has an excellent track record regarding funded research including having won more than one million pounds of funding in the last year for 2 large EU Horizon grants; ‘Gender Empowerment through Politics in Classrooms’ (704,872.35 Euros for Professor Hoskins), ‘Strategies for achieving equity and inclusion in education, training and learning in democratic Europe’ (359 371.25 Euros for Professor Hoskins), a Leverhulme project ‘Measuring and assessing the democratic performance of education systems’ (£36,269.00 for Professor Hoskins) and a 6^th repeat funding of 105,667.37 US dollars from UNICEF towards measuring Life Skills and Citizenship Education in the Middle East and North Africa. Other recent funded research projects include ‘The Skills Imperative 2035: Essential Skills for tomorrow’s workforce’ (Funded by the Nuffield Foundation) and ‘Post-16 Educational Trajectories and Social Inequalities in Political Engagement (Funded by the Nuffield Foundation).

Professor Hoskins has an exceptional record on knowledge exchange and impact and in collaboration with international organisations, UNICEF, World Bank, Council of Europe and UNESCO, has previously developed assessment instruments to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching 21st century/life skills within schools. These experiences were developed into a case study that was a 4* Ref2021 submission. Sociology | University of Roehampton, London

Professor Hoskins has 6 years of policy experience having previously worked at the Council of Europe in France leading on youth research, at the European Commission in Belgium and then in Italy leading the development of indicators on Active Citizenship.

Professor Hoskins is currently supervising PhD students including;

Kim Olden - Exploring how gender is performed in online spaces: A transnational comparative case study of young adult Asian Intercountry Adoptees (ICAs) use of Instagram as a potential political platform.

Yiyan Shi - The career and life expectations of generation Z in their transitions from school to work in the U.K.

Her recently successful PhD students are;

Tuba Tayfun Kayalarli – Identifying the role of community organisations in the integration of Turkish-speaking migrant women in London

Dr Lanora Callahan - Measuring the socioemotional impact of dance amongst disadvantaged and ethnic minority youth: a random control, mixed method approach

Dr Jinyu Yang: whose PhD was on Learning Citizenship and Political Engagement at University in the UK and China. This study is using mixed method research including the analysis of the Citizenship Education Longitudinal data to explore if university has an effect on engagement and establish which methods are effective.

Dr LiYuan Liu: Whose Phd was on Exploring the Relationship between Education, Economy and Individual Civic Attitudes in Europe and Asia. This study is quantitative and uses multilevel modelling to analyse World Values Survey and the IEA International Citizenship and Civic education Study data to identify if education plays a mediating role between the economic situation in a country and civic attitudes.

Professor Hoskins is particularly interested in supervising new postgraduate research in the following areas:

- citizenship education and Political socialisation

- Inequalities and political engagement

- The effect of the economic crisis on Citizenship

- Comparative research on political engagement across Europe

If you are student who is interested in undertaking a PhD in these areas, please contact her by email.

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