Patrick Alexander

Dr Patrick Alexander is an social anthropologist specialising in the field of education. His current research focuses on schooling in the UK and the US, and on the themes of age and social identity, 'youth', aspiration and inequality. He is a College Lecturer in Social Anthropology at St. Hugh's College.

Patrick has been selected to become the Fulbright-Peabody Research Scholar for the US-UK Fulbright Commission in 2014-2015. As part of this one year post, Patrick will conduct an in-depth, comparative study of aspiration, imagined futures and transitions into early adulthood among final year inner-city school students in New York and London. Patrick will be working alongside renowned educationalists at New York University's Metro Center for Urban Education. This promises to be a challenging and enriching programme of research that will shine a light on the complex realities of what it means to 'come of age' in the public/state education systems of these two cities.