I have broad interests in class inequalities and differences, whether in relation to education, work, culture, politics or self-perception, as part of a larger general concern with systems of power and domination and how they interplay to shape who we are. I work closely with the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu in this regard, though I try to take it in new directions.

I'm the author/editor of Class, Individualization and Late Modernity: In Search of the Reflexive Worker (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Class Inequality in Austerity Britain (with Steven Roberts and Mike Savage, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Class (Polity, 2015, 2nd ed. 2024), Beyond Bourdieu: From Genetic Structuralism to Relational Phenomenology (Polity, 2016), Class in the New Millennium: The Structure, Homologies and Experience of the British Social Space (Routledge, 2017) and Bourdieu and After: A Guide to Relational Phenomenology (Routledge, 2020).

I recently completed a comparative analysis of class structures, or 'social spaces', across capitalist nations, with a particular focus on the US, Germany and Sweden. This was funded by the European Research Council and the results are published in a four-volume series entitled The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies (Routledge). The first two volumes, focussing on class structures and lifestyles, were published in 2020 and 2022. The third, focussing on themes of intersectionality and work-life balance, was published in 2024, and the final volume, documenting singular experiences of class, was published in 2025.