Erna Nairz-Wirth is head of the Education Sciences Group at Vienna University for Economics and Business. She earned the rank of associate professor in 2007 in the course of her habilitation (venia docendi) in the field of education sciences and pedagogics. She has published numerous articles in the field of sociology of education. Erna Nairz-Wirth has designed and conducted numerous qualitative and quantitative studies on inequality in education, habitus, professionalisation and school-dropouts. She was Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2013.