Alicia García-Sierra

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research LIVES at the University of Lausanne. I work on the EQUALOPP project, which examines the relationship between the normative ideal of equality of opportunity and the empirical measures of inequality.

I obtained my PhD from the University of Oxford and Nuffield College in January 2024, supported by the Clarendon Scholarship. My thesis, Uneven Pathways, advances the understanding of the socioeconomic inequalities in children’s development by examining three novel mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. It was awarded the ECSR Dissertation of the Year Prize.

Prior to joining Oxford, I completed a Masters in Research in Social Sciences at the Carlos III-Juan March Institute (IC3JM), where I held the Juan March Servera Scholarship. I also worked as a Research Assistant for the Effort and Social Inequality Research Project, and as a Teaching Assistant in the Social Sciences Department.

My research interests lie in the fields of social stratification and child development. My main aim is to understand how advantages and disadvantages are transmitted across generations, as well as how social structures such as the family or the education system intertwine with these processes. In my research, I use quantitative methods and household panel datasets, with a special emphasis on causally-oriented designs.

My work has been published in European Sociological Review, Social Science Research and Social Justice Research.