Senior Research Fellow, School of Education and Sociology, University of Portsmouth
Dr Jessica Gagnon is a sociologist of higher education whose research is primarily focused on inequalities in higher education. She is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education and Sociology at the University of Portsmouth, where she leads the University of Portsmouth Higher Education Forum, an inter-disciplinary hub for the development, implementation and promotion of world-leading research in the field. She has a track record of securing research funding and publishes widely around inequalities in higher education. She currently leads the Office for Students funded Changing Mindsets project http://mindsets.port.ac.uk/ and she is a researcher on several other funded projects.
Dr Gagnon has a PhD in Education and an MSc in Social Research Methods from the University of Sussex, an MA in Higher Education from Santa Clara University, and a BA in English and Journalism from Framingham State University. She is a first-generation student from a working-class, single mother family. Dr Gagnon has worked in higher education in the US and UK for more than 15 years. In addition to her research, she has taught at the undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels.
