Arun Frey

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, and a member of the Sociology Department. My research has been featured in various news outlets, including the New York Times, The Economist, Die Zeit, ARTE, and the BBC, and was recently discussed in an episode of Vox’s The Weeds podcast.

Much of my work studies how migration affects group dynamics: from everyday behaviour, such as deciding where to live within a city, to more nuanced changes in attitudes, up to the most extreme and violent encounters. To study such different interactions, I draw on a broad range of data sources, including administrative, survey, event, web-scraped, and digital trace data.

I am also interested in understanding how institutions reinforce inequalities in access and outcomes. Most recently, I examined how school closures during COVID-19 have impacted student learning and educational inequality. This research was recently published at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has had a documented impact on policy in several countries and invited hearings at the European Commission, the OECD, and the World Bank.