Anthony Francis Heath,

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

, FBA (born 15 December 1942) is a British sociologist who is a professor of sociology at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

and a professorial fellow of

Nuffield College Nuffield College () is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is a graduate college specialising in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. N ...

, Oxford.

Life and career

Anthony Heath studied classics and economics at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, receiving a

double first The British undergraduate degree classification system is a Grading in education, grading structure used for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and Master's degree#Integrated Masters Degree, integrated master's degrees in the United Kingd ...

. After a spell in the Treasury he returned to Cambridge to study for a doctorate on

social exchange theory Social exchange theory is a sociological and psychological theory which studies how people interact by weighing the potential costs and benefits of their relationships. This occurs when each party has goods that the other parties value. Social exc ...

with John H Goldthorpe as supervisor. He then moved to Jesus College, Oxford, as a tutorial fellow, followed by an official fellowship and then a professorial fellowship at Nuffield College, when he became Oxford's first professor of sociology in 1999, and founded the Oxford Department of Sociology. He was elected a fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

in 1992. He is also a fellow of the European Academy of Sociology. At Oxford he first worked with Chelly Halsey and John Ridge investigating social class inequalities in education, analysing the 1972 Nuffield

social mobility Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given socie ...

survey and working in the political arithmetic tradition. He has been closely associated with this tradition of research ever since, analysing large-scale social surveys to investigate 'real world' issues of class, gender and ethnic stratification. A recent study in this tradition is his 2001 Oxford Admissions Study, which investigated the extent to which Oxford admissions procedures followed meritocratic principles. Together with

Roger Jowell Sir Roger Mark Jowell, CBE (26 March 1942 – 25 December 2011) was a British social statistician and academic. He founded Social and Community Planning Research, now known as the National Centre for Social Research, and the Centre for Compar ...

and John Curtice, he directed the 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997 British Election Surveys, focussing particularly on the topics of class voting, social change and the future of the left in Britain. More recently he has focussed on issues of ethnic inequality, particularly on ‘ethnic penalties’ in education and the labour market. He coordinated a major cross-national investigation of ethnic inequalities in the labour market in Western countries, comparing the magnitude of the ethnic penalties experienced by different minorities in different countries. Current work includes a major new national study of ethnic minority political integration based on the Ethnic Minority British Election Survey. He leads the Centre for social investigation, an interdisciplinary research group based at

. He has written reports for government on discrimination in the labour market, social cohesion, and on national identity.

Selected bibliography

*Heath, A F (2018) ''Social Progress in Britain''. Oxford: Oxford University Press * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heath, Anthony 1942 births Living people English sociologists Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford Fellows of the British Academy People from Bath, Somerset Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge