Anita Koo researches on the structure of social stratification and its impact on the educational opportunities and chances of social mobility among individuals from different classes and gender. She had received two GRFs to support the research on the processes and mechanism of social mobility/ reproduction among different groups of migrant youths within the context of rapid expansion of vocational education in post-reform China. She had also served as one of the co-PIs of an interdisciplinary CRF project that examines the school-to-work transitions among the new generation of young workers who study in vocational colleges. Her publications appeared in Sociology, Journal of Education Policy, Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Chinese Sociological Review, etc. Currently, she is researching the development of professional education in Hong Kong and its relations to the expansion of higher education. Aims of her work is to improve our understanding of the operation of class and gender in a massified higher education system, so as to find ways to faciliate social mobilities among the disadvantaged.

Sociology of education; Youth studies; Class inequality and mobility; Gender studies; Migrant population; Contemporary China