Professor Rachel Brooks
Rachel Brooks was a CGHE Co-Investigator on Project 9, ‘Mapping supranational higher education space’.
Rachel is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey, and a member of governing council of the Society for Research in Higher Education. She is also a member of the education sub-panel for REF2021, the UK’s current national research assessment exercise.
Rachel’s research focuses primarily on the sociology of higher education. In addition to her CGHE contribution, she is currently leading a large, cross-national European Research Council-funded project on the ways in which higher education students are conceptualised (see here for details). She is also involved in other research on international student mobilities, and on gender and parenting practices.
Her full profile is available here.
CGHE research projects
Past Events
Select publications
Brooks, R., & Rensimer, L. (2024). Higher education actors’ responses to the Ukraine-Russia conflict: an analysis of geopolitical spatial imaginaries. Journal of Education Policy, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2024.2334945
Rensimer, L., & Brooks, R. (2024). “The European Universities Initiative: Further Stratification in the Pursuit of European Cooperation?” Compare. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2024.2307551?src=exp-la
Brooks, R., & Rensimer, L. (2023). “The European Universities Initiative and European Spatial Imaginaries”. Globalisation, Societies and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2210515
Rensimer, L., & Brooks, R. (2023). “The European Universities Initiative: Championing Excellence and Inclusion?” International Higher Education, 113, 32–33. https://doi.org/10.36197/IHE.2023.113.14
Brooks, R. (2021). The construction of higher education students within national policy: a cross-European comparison, Compare, 51, 2, 161-180.
Brooks, R. (2021). Europe as spatial imaginary? Narratives from higher education ‘policy influencers’ across the continent, Journal of Education Policy, 36, 2, 159-178.
Brooks, R. (2021). Students as consumers? The perspectives of students’ union leaders across Europe, Higher Education Quarterly, May 2021
Brooks, R. (2020) Diversity and the European higher education student: policy influencers’ narratives of difference, Studies in Higher Education, 45, 7, 1507-1518.
Brooks, R. (2020) Asserting the nation: the dominance of national narratives in policymakers’ constructions of higher education students, Sociological Research Online, 25, 2, 273-288.
Brooks, R. (2019) The construction of higher education students within national policy: a cross-European comparison, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.
Abrahams, J. and Brooks, R. (2019) Higher education students as political actors: evidence from England and Ireland, Journal of Youth Studies, 22, 1, 108-123.
Brooks, R. (2019) Europe as spatial imaginary? Narratives from higher education ‘policy influencers’ across the continent, Journal of Education Policy.
Brooks, R. (2018) Higher education mobilities: a cross-national European comparison, Geoforum, 93, 87-96.
Brooks, R. (2018) Understanding the higher education student in Europe: a comparative analysis, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 48, 4, 500-517.
Brooks, R. (2018) The construction of higher education students in English policy documents, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39, 6, 745-761.
