Emma Smith is a professor of education at the University of Warwick. Her research interests are in the field of sociology of education, specifically exploring issues of social justice, inequality and policy as they apply to access and engagement in education at all levels. She is interested in all aspects of research methods but particularly in the use of large-scale secondary datasets to explore issues of education and inequality. She has published widely in this area and is the author of the textbook Key Issues in Social Justice in Education, now in its third edition, and co-editor of two SAGE handbooks: The BERA Handbook of Education Research and The Handbook of Comparative Studies in Education.