Colin Mack is a Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research examines class and spatial inequalities in education and housing, with a particular focus on the Scottish context and the Greater Glasgow region. Drawing on social theory — including Bourdieu, Marx, Weber, and Critical Realist frameworks — his work explores how structural inequalities shape educational experiences and outcomes.

Colin completed his PhD in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow (2022), where his doctoral research examined the spatial distribution of educational inequality and housing in Greater Glasgow. He is currently preparing a journal article for submission to the British Educational Research Journal and is developing a comparative project examining social housing and education across Glasgow and Ireland, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Limerick. He has presented research findings to the Scottish Government (2025–26) and has contributed to international knowledge exchange through his work with the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, including a background paper to the Fifth International Conference on Learning Cities (2021) and a forthcoming book chapter on the political economy of learning cities.

Colin's research sits at the intersection of the sociology of education and social theory. A central concern is understanding how class inequalities are produced, reproduced, and experienced within educational settings, with a particular focus on the Scottish context and the Greater Glasgow region. Alongside this, he has a strong interest in spatial inequalities, examining how the geographical distribution of educational opportunity and housing intersect with class, drawing on work developed during his doctoral research in the Greater Glasgow area.

He is currently developing a comparative project exploring the relationship between social housing and education in Glasgow and Ireland, in collaboration with the University of Limerick, examining how place-based inequalities shape educational experiences across these two contexts.

His theoretical work draws on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of capital, field, and habitus, alongside Marxist and Weberian traditions, and Critical Realist philosophy of social science. He is particularly interested in how these frameworks can be applied to empirical educational research, and in the relationship between structure, agency, and educational inequality. His methodological approach is broadly mixed methods, with expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research design and analysis.

Research groups

• Socio-Environmental Action
• Social & Urban Policy

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Colin teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the School of Social and Political Sciences. He is school-wide convenor of core quantitative methods provision and currently leads the following courses: Quantitative Data Analysis (PGT); Big Data, Policy and Power (UG); and Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (UG, multi-School delivery). He also contributes to education policy teaching at undergraduate level.

Research and Knowledge Exchange

• Research findings presented to the Scottish Government (2025–26)
• Lead Researcher, UNESCO/UIL project on Universities' Roles in Building Learning Cities; co-author of forthcoming book chapter (The Political Economy of Learning Cities, provisional title)
• Author, UNESCO background paper, Fifth International Conference on Learning Cities (2021)
• Invited Presenter, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and Shanghai Open University (2021)
• Ongoing collaborative research project on education and disadvantage with colleagues at the University of Limerick

Publications

• Mack, C. (forthcoming) [‘Circuits of Schooling’ in comprehensive school markets: a case study of school choice in the Scottish state secondary school system.] — journal article in preparation, target journal: British Educational Research Journal
• UNESCO background paper: From Emergency to Resilience: Building Healthy and Resilient Cities Through Learning (2021)
• UNESCO book chapter: The Political Economy of Learning Cities (forthcoming, 2026)

Postgraduate Research
Colin welcomes enquiries from prospective postgraduate researchers interested in class and spatial inequalities in education and housing, the sociology of education, and theoretically-informed qualitative or mixed methods research in the Scottish or UK context.