Nicholas Martindale

DPhil in Sociology

Research Interests: How privatization and outsourcing are reorganizing the world of work and how these processes affect the possibilities for workers and employers to mobilize collectively to achieve their goals.

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and a member of Nuffield College. My main areas of interest are in how privatization and outsourcing are reorganizing the world of work and how these processes affect the possibilities for workers and employers to mobilize collectively to achieve their goals.

My current research focuses on the Academies and Free Schools programmes, which have introduced private provision into the English publicly funded school system. I assess the impact of these providers on the school workforce and investigate the commercial and political networks of the directors of trusts that own and operate Academies and Free Schools.

I teach statistical programming for PPE students as part of the Q-Step Centre in the Department of Politics and International Relations. As a teacher I draw on my experience as a graduate of the Teach First programme and as a fully-qualified Maths teacher with five years’ experience in South London comprehensive schools.

I completed an MSc in Political Sociology at LSE (2016), receiving Hobhouse Prizes for best overall performance and best dissertation.  I studied in Japan as a Tsuzuki scholar (2011) after my undergraduate degree at Cambridge (2010) in Social and Political Sciences (Part II) with French and Spanish (Part I).