Welcome!
I'm Sangwoo Lee, a labour economist with a focus on higher education, work, employment, job quality and intergenerational social mobility. I am currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Employment Research (IER) at the University of Warwick. Before this, I was a Research Fellow at the Department of Education, Practice and Society at UCL Institute of Education, and a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.
I completed my Ph.D. in Education at the University of Cambridge in 2022. Prior to that, I earned an Ed.M. in International Education Policy from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics from Grinnell College.
My research focuses on social inequalities in work and education, with two primary areas of interest: the importance of job quality for business performance, societal progress, and individual well-being, and the role of higher education in enhancing students' skills to better prepare them for the labour market, regardless of their socioeconomic background. My recent work includes studies on transnational higher education, job quality trends related to labour market institutions, the implications of job quality as graduates' labour market outcomes, the relationship between job quality and well-being, and the distribution of 'bad jobs' in Europe and South Korea.
Recent research topics include:
The role of higher education in economic inequalities and intergenerational social mobility
Job quality as graduates' labour market outcomes (job quality premium)
The socioeconomic gaps in educational achievement
Skills shortages and gaps
Job quality polarisation and its trend
Platform economy and occupational safety and health
Quantitative analysis
Departmental Tutor - University of Warwick, Institute for Employment Research
BSc Thesis Supervisor - University of Warwick, Department of Economics
MSc Thesis Supervisor - University of Warwick, Department of Economics
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant - Social Research Institute, University College London
Social Inequality and Mobility (SOCS0045)
Economics of Education (SOCS0042)
Undergraduate Supervisor - Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
Designing Education Research: Quantitative Course Work (CW2)
Teaching Assistant - Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
Research Method Strands (RMS) for MPhil course
English, Korean, Chinese
STATA, SPSS, R, Python
sangwoo.lee@warwick.ac.uk