Dirk Witteveen

Senior Lecturer 

Economic Inequality and Social Policy

I'm a sociologist and social policy researcher at the University of Oxford and Nuffield College. My research focuses on higher education, wage-setting mechanisms within firms and markets, wealth stratification, racial and ethnic earnings inequalities, immigration, intergenerational social mobility, elitism, and mental health. Most of my studies contain a cross-national comparative angle. I use computational methods and other quantitative techniques in my own research, while retaining a broad interest in advances in sociological and economic theory. 

Currently, I teach political economy  and comparative social policy in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention. I previously taught sociological theory for undergraduates in Human Sciences and Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE), and quantitative replication and research design for graduate students in Sociology and Demography.  

I obtained a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York (CUNY), the Graduate Center. I held visiting positions at Stockholm University (2015 and 2021) and the Center for European Studies at Harvard University (AY '22-'23). I previously was a Postdoctoral Prize Fellow at Nuffield College, in Oxford. I am currently on the job market.

Some of my current projects involve the role of social class compositions of workplaces in earnings inequality, racial earnings inequalities in professional soccer, college wealth premia in high-income countries, historical social mobility, the effects of loneliness on health, and payoffs from education-skill-occupation matching in the US.