Rebecca, tell us a little about your background!

My involvement and interest in the public sector and its interfaces run deep! I am currently Associate Professor at Stockholm University. For the past decade, understanding how social processes reduce or generate (un)equal outcomes in and around educational organisations, and especially in situations of uncertainty, has been a focal point in my research. Some of the studies I have led include research on education-to-work pathways that are institutionalised, as well as pathways that are emerging and anticipatory, in a variety of contexts such as Singapore, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

I have been involved in teaching and supervising at the international and comparative education masters programme at Stockholm University since 2019. I also supervise PhD students on a range of topics from student movements and collective action, the organisation of national scholarship programmes to the internationalisation of higher education. Before life in academia, I worked in the public service and conducted research for policy and practice at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Institute for Adult Learning in Singapore.

What are you most looking forward to in your new role as director of research?

I look forward to continuing the work I have begun together with others at Score around the strategic initiative, organizing education. The first main task is launching the project, CYCLE, where I will examine the valuation of short-cycle education and training for the green transition. This project is set against the backdrop of the acceleration, shortening and “stacking” of learning experiences for long, transformative societal processes, and as expectations that we engage in “lifelong learning” heighten. I am particularly keen to scrutinise this shortening-lengthening paradox and what the consequences of these processes are for public institutions, together with other researchers across disciplinary boundaries.

A research agenda that I am currently sketching out pertains to examining “micro-credentialling”, as a contemporary mode of coordinating and compromising in education and labour markets, for “macro problems”. Score’s longstanding profile areas on organizing knowledge, hyper-rationality, and the organization of markets, set solid foundations from which to drive and initiate further research in this direction.

What are your thoughts on how you want to develop the research at Score?

Research on organizing education is inter- and multi-disciplinary. It is my hope that through my tenure as research leader, Score can serve as a bridge for connecting research islands and communities. As a researcher who has been engaged in both qualitative and quantitative research around the organizing of education, I would like to make use of this background and my relationship with national and international researchers engaged in these various paradigms, to contemplate methodological and theoretical possibilities and modes of researching, locating possibilities for rejuvenating methodological discussions in organizational research.

Learn more about Rebecca Ye