Job Purpose: To make a leading contribution to the project Educational Disadvantage and Place within the Education programme of the ESRC-funded Urban Big Data Centre. Specifically, the job requires expert knowledge in the area of educational disadvantage and/or urban neighbourhoods, and strong proven skills in the quantitative analysis of large data sets.

At the Network’s last conference in 2015, hosted by our colleagues at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, we discussed how substantial learning is connected with the everyday life of adults, with the environment and social milieus they live in, with their efforts to tackle social inequalities, injustices, and to enhance their quality of life and well-being.

Dr Margaret Sutherland was keynote speaker at the OEZBF Congress in Salzburg, Austria. The Austrian Research and Support Centre for the Gifted and Talented is the national institution for the further development of gifted education and the promotion of excellence in Austria.

Young people are increasingly leaving the small or medium-size communities (SMC’s) in which they were born and attended basic school. They go to the big cities for education, jobs or lifestyles. This is in the long run devastating for the SMC’s as well as for the fast growing big cities – but also for the quality of the young people’s 21st century learning and capacity building.