I am an Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. Between 1997 and 2001 I was Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute, Florence, where my Chair was called Social Stratification and Inequality . Before going to Florence I was Professor of Sociology at Queen s University, Belfast, and, before that, I worked at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. I am a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a member of Academia Europaea. I serve as a member of the Scientific Committee of the Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales...