I study the consequences and reproduction of social inequality in education. The goal of my research is to understand the mechanisms through which inequalities in families’ socioeconomic resources translate into inequalities in parenting practices, children’s school experiences, and educational outcomes. My work can be categorized into three research agendas: (1) What roles do families and schools play in the reproduction of inequality in education? (2) How does the social environment mediate and condition genetic effects on educational outcomes? (3) How does the interplay between social inequality and microbiota affect the reproduction of social inequality in education? Rooted in Sociology, my research draws on theories and methods from Genetics, Economics, Psychology, and Microbial Ecology, offering a truly interdisciplinary and innovative approach to the study of inequality and stratification.
Empirically, I use quantitative methods for causal analysis and large-scale data sets such as Danish register data, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Children and Young Adults, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and the Danish Longitudinal Survey of Children.
I earned my Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Copenhagen in 2018. Between 2018 and 2020 I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, funded by an International Postdoc grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. I currently hold a position as Assistant Professor in Social Studies at Roskilde University, the Department of Social Sciences and Business (https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/persons/astab).