Rate My Professor Selçuk Bedük

Dr Selçuk Bedük is a Departmental Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. He holds a BA in Economics and completed his DPhil in Social Policy at Oxford in 2018 as the inaugural Barnett Scholar, with a thesis examining poverty measurement in the EU. Prior to re-joining the department in October 2021, he served as a Senior Research Officer at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. Bedük is also an Associate Member of Nuffield College and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.

His research centres on poverty, inequality, and comparative social policy, addressing how best to measure and respond to poverty, how inequality accumulates across the life course and transmits between generations, and which welfare systems most effectively reduce poverty and provide security. Current projects include the intergenerational persistence of homeownership in Europe, funded by a Volkswagen Stiftung grant; long-term childhood poverty in Britain, supported by a John Fell Fund grant; the financial consequences of job loss in different welfare states; the conditions of the poorest households during the UK austerity period; and life-course earnings inequality in Britain. Key publications include “Insurance against risk? Economic cost and compensation of job loss in different welfare states” (2025, Socio-Economic Review, with co-authors); “What explains intergenerational associations in home ownership and value in the UK?” (2024, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility); “Lives in welfare states: Life courses, earnings accumulation and relative living standards in five European countries” (2024, American Journal of Sociology, with co-authors); “Insured privately? Wealth stratification of job loss in the UK” (2023, Social Inclusion); “Missing dimensions of poverty? Calibrating deprivation scales using perceived financial situation” (2020, European Sociological Review); and earlier works on multidimensional deprivation measures and material deprivation indices in the EU (2017–2018). He supervises MSc and DPhil students on themes related to poverty, inequality, and comparative social policy.