Dr Daniel McArthur

Profile

Biography

I am a lecturer in Education and member of the Centre for Research on Education and Social Justice (CRESJ). My research falls at the intersection between education, sociology, and political science. I study the causes and consequences of economic inequalities, focusing on the roles that education, place, and politics play in the reproduction of advantage and disadvantage. I have examined these processes in a range of contexts, from the impact of school rankings on residential segregation in England, to the role of higher education expansion in shaping attitudes towards welfare recipients, and the effects of reforms to secondary education across Europe on educational mobility. I use primarily quantitative methods, working with a wide range of survey, census, and administrative data.

If you’d like to discuss any of these topics further please do not hesitate to get in touch. I’m always keen to make connections with other researchers, potential PhD students, and policymakers or practitioners with interests in common.

My teaching focuses on research methods at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I aim to equip students with the tools to critically interrogate and assess existing research, and produce their own through dissertation projects. I am currently Deputy Pathway Director for Undergraduate Studies, responsible for undergraduate admissions (with Sarah Wild).

Career

I joined York in Spring 2022. Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. In this role I worked on an ERC funded project - SchoolPol - The Transformation of Post War Education: Causes & Effects. I have a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics (2019), where I wrote my dissertation on how economic advantage shapes stigmatising stereotypes about welfare recipients. Prior to this I completed an MSc in Sociology from LSE (2014), and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford (2012).

Research

Overview

The fundamental questions driving my research are about the causes and consequences of educational and economic inequalities, how they are reproduced across generations, and the role that place, politics, and policy play in ameliorating or exacerbating them.

I have examined how these processes play out in a wide range of contexts, with my published research shedding light on issues ranging from the impact of school rankings on residential segregation in England, the role of higher education expansion in shaping attitudes towards welfare recipients, and the effects of reforms to secondary education across Europe on educational mobility.

My research is highly interdisciplinary, contributing to debates in sociology, education, and political science, while also drawing on economics, geography, and social policy. I focus primarily on quantitative methods, using large scale secondary data from surveys, censuses, and administrative sources, with a strong commitment to making data and code openly available.

Projects

My research currently focuses on the following topics:

• The link between the massification of higher education and geographical inequalities
• The role that geographic mobility plays in the reproduction of advantage and disadvantage
• The impacts of childhood exposure to unaffordable housing on inequalities in education and the labour market
• Accommodation costs and access to higher education among low income students

If you’d like to discuss any of these topics further, then please do not hesitate to get in touch. I’m keen to make connections with other researchers, policymakers, or practitioners who are interested in my research.

Supervision

I am always happy to hear from potential PhD students! I’m open to supervising projects that relate to any aspect of my research interests, using data from any stage of education (or beyond) and any part of the world. I’m especially interested in quantitative projects using large scale secondary data and/or comparative projects.

Completed PhD Students

2022-24 David Gilani (co-supervised with Liz Thomas) ‘Agentic belonging: how can universities enhance student outcomes by helping students to better understand their own belonging needs and take action?’.

Publications

Selected publications

Gingrich, Jane, Daniel McArthur, and Mihnea Cuibus. 2026. “Skills, Spatial Polarization, and the Politics of the Knowledge Economy: Introducing the Regional Human Capital Database.” British Journal of Political Science 56:e31. doi:10.1017/S0007123426101513.

Gingrich, Jane, Anja Giudici, and Daniel McArthur. 2024. “Multidimensionality Matters: The Implications of Educational Hierarchy and Differentiation for Intergenerational Mobility in Europe.” Comparative Education Review 000–000. doi:10.1086/729572. [Winner of the 2024 CIES Bereday Award for best article in Comparative Education Review]

McArthur, Daniel. 2023. “Why Are the Highly Educated More Sympathetic towards Welfare Recipients?” European Journal of Political Research 62(1):70–94. doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12496.

McArthur, Daniel, and Aaron Reeves. 2022. “The Unintended Consequences of Quantifying Quality: Does Ranking School Performance Shape the Geographical Concentration of Advantage?” American Journal of Sociology 128(2):515–51. doi:10.1086/722470.

McArthur, Daniel, and Aaron Reeves. 2019. “The Rhetoric of Recessions: How British Newspapers Talk about the Poor When Unemployment Rises, 1896–2000.” Sociology 53:6 1005-1025.

External activities

Editorial duties

I am an associate editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education. I have also peer reviewed for a wide range of journals and funders including:

• ESRC (Responsive Mode and Secondary Data Analysis)
• American Journal of Sociology
• British Journal of Political Science
• Social Science and Medicine

Media coverage

My work has appeared in a range of national newspapers including The Observer and the Daily Mail, while I have also appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live.