Associate Professor Wojtek Tomaszewski is Principal Research Fellow in Quantitative Methods and a Research Group Leader of the Education, Employment and Disadvantage Research Group at the Institute for Social Science Research. He holds a BSc and MSc in Mathematics, as well as an MA in Sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland and a PhD in Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Wojtek joined UQ from the National Centre for Social Research in London and has specialist expertise in quantitative research methods and advanced statistical analysis.
Motivated by his strong research interest in the impact of disadvantage on educational and labour market outcomes in young people, Wojtek has been emerging as a national leader in education equity research who uses advanced quantitative research to support students to succeed in education, regardless of their backgrounds. Wojtek has a proven track record of research achievement in the Higher Education (HE) equity area. He was a Chief Investigator involved in scoping the Widening Participation Longitudinal Study for the federal Department of Education (the DET), with a focus on technical specifications to support the identification of equity interventions for different disadvantaged cohorts. He recently led the Review of Equity Groups in Higher Education for the DET, which investigated educational disadvantage of various equity groups in Australian HE system. He is currently leading a follow up project funded under the 2018 National Priorities Pool round, titled ‘Investigating the effects of cumulative disadvantage’. Wojtek has also successfully completed two projects funded though the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education’s Research Grant Scheme in the previous rounds, investigating the impacts of school-based support on university participation of low-SES students, and tracking graduate outcomes of students from disadvantaged background.
Wojtek has also delivered multiple projects in the field of education engagement and equity for state governments in Australia and previously for the British Government. He has been a Chief Investigator engaged by the Queensland Government on two commissioned research projects to investigate strategies to improve attendance in Queensland schools and to identify indicators of students at risk of disengagement from education. He has managed a multi-year partnership with the NSW Government to develop new systems and end-user support for longitudinal data on student engagement.
As an accomplished international scholar, Wojtek has published in high-profile international academic journals, including Journal of Youth Studies, Social Indicators Research, Journal of Sociology, Social Service Review and Research in Higher Education, etc. Wojtek also investigates intergenerational educational disadvantage as a Senior Research Fellow in the Life Course Centre.
