Isabelle Huning

I am interested in the political economy of skill formation, welfare institutions and institutional change, as well as comparative social and education policy. My PhD research at the University of York shifts the focus from formal institutions to the narratives surrounding apprenticeships, considered to have grown over decades and centuries. I use state of the art quantitative methods that rely on a large amount of text as data to understand how narratives shifted across different institutional and cultural settings, and their impact on the institutional paths towards or away from traditional apprenticeships.

Prior to starting my PhD, I worked in the German vocational education sector for seven years, first as a trainer and social worker, then in quality management.