The University welcomes visiting Global Chair Professor Heike Solga for her first in-person visit from the 21st March - 24th March 2022. This follows remote engagement in 2020/2021 and a public lecture on COVID-19 and the digital transformation of work: A problem for the German apprenticeship system? (28 January 2021).
Professor Heike Solga is Director of the research unit ‘Skill Formation and Labor Markets’ at the prestigious WZB – Berlin Social Science Center and a Professor in Sociology at FU Berlin. She is one of the world’s foremost and innovative researchers into ‘marginalised’ educational populations and educational disadvantage, with a particular interest in vocational training and its impact on labour market outcomes, social mobility, and career trajectories. She is currently also leading a project on education inequality around university admissions in Germany.
Her scholarship speaks closely to the ethos and ambitions of social science research at Bath and echoes our University-wide priorities around widening participation. Her Global Chair will not only create new collaborative research across the Departments of Education and Social & Policy Sciences, and the Institute for Policy Research, but will also provide new training opportunities for our doctoral students and early-career researchers, including in quantitative, experimental, and interdisciplinary education research design.
Hosted at Bath by Professor Hugh Lauder in the Department of Education and Professor Lynn Prince Cooke in the Department of Social & Policy Sciences, Professor Solga’s Global Chair builds on existing links with the WZB. Professor Lauder and Professor Cooke said:
Professor Solga is internationally recognised for her commitment to interdisciplinarity, and engagement with the worlds of policy and practice. As we emerge from the current pandemic, the relationship between education, the labour market, and social policy is likely to lead to a major debate across Europe as to how they should be reconfigured. Professor Solga’s Global Chair and the partnership with WZB will allow us to raise further the profile of our cutting-edge scholarship in this field.
Appointed as a 2020-2021 Global Chair Professor Solga has engaged with the Department for Development and Alumni Relations and the student community to provide expert feedback on the University's Widening Participation initiatives and Gold Scholarship Scheme. She also delivered a public lecture discussing Germany's apprenticeship model and its value for supporting young people's integration into the labour market remotely in January 2021. Professor Solga was unable to visit at the time due to Covid restrictions, so the University is delighted that her appointment will continue into the academic year 2021-22 to enable these links to expand further.
Activities in Bath
Professor Solga will attend a number of engagements on her visit to Bath.
- On Tuesday 22 March Professor Solga is delivering a lecture entitled Do gender equality policies impact on gender differences in academic promotion? Some lessons learned from Germany.
- On Wednesday 23rd March she will be hosting a seminar entitled How about Education and Computers, who wins and loses in the jobs stakes?
All colleagues are welcome to sign up and join in on the events.
During Professor Solga's visit, she will also be meeting with the University of Bath community, including Pro Vice-Chancellor of Education Julian Chaudhuri and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences David Galbreath. Professor Solga will also meet with the Scholarship and Bursary Enrichment Manager in Student Services to continue the conversation about Bath's Gold Scholars programme and will be hosting a lunchtime seminar with Gold Scholar students to discuss first-hand experiences.
All are welcome to attend Professor Solga’s lecture on gender equality in academia and seminar discussing education and technology use in the workplace.