Gaële Goastellec - Biography#

Gaële Goastellec is a sociologist. Her main research interests lie in the relationship between education and social organizations, analyzed through the socio-historical comparison of higher education systems and institutions.

A first stream of research deals with access to Higher Education (from Middle Ages to Contemporary Europe and on a global scale for the 20th century), with a special concern for social belongings’ categorization and its translation into admission policies. She has developed an original perspective by bringing together research on higher education, migration and social policies showing how citizenship articulates with access to higher education. Her most recent research focus on exiles opportunities to access HE depending on national administrative categorizations of refugees.

A second line of research analyzes academic careers (also through international comparisons) and HE organizations, documenting structural, organizational and social determinants of the academic profession.

Professor (MER) at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where she is the new director of the Observatory Science, Policy and Society (mid-2021-), after she was the head of the Laboratory Capitalism, Culture and Society (LACCUS, 2018-2020). she is the current Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER) president, and the vice-President of the AISLF research committee on International Comparisons.

Her research has been supported by many grants, with various international research collaboration. She has authored about a hundred of publications and been invited to present her research in many institutions (Collège de France, Science-Po Paris, Harvard University, European Science Foundation, Hurst Seminar, etc)