Editorial on the Special Issue “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences” Editorial on the Special Issue “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”* Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk Abstract: Recent decades have seen major changes in the educational profiles of the populations of Western industrialised countries, notably a sharp rise in educational attainment and a reversal of the gender gap in education. These trends are likely to have affected patterns of educational assortative mating and its consequences. In this editorial, we first review the empirical evidence on educational assortative mating patterns over the last two decades. Specifically, we examine whether educational homogamy has increased among the highly educated, whether women are now less likely to marry upward across cohorts, and whether the rates of relative educational homogamy in populations have increased. We also examine the factors that explain trends and cross-country differences in educational homogamy. Second, we review the consequences of educational homogamy for several important social outcomes, in particular partnership stability and union dissolution, fertility, and children’s educational attainment. Is educational homogamy increasingly affecting these outcomes, and if so, in what ways and why? Third, we identify research gaps regarding educational assortative mating and its consequences. The six empirical studies in this special issue attempt to fill some of these gaps. We briefly outline these studies and their main findings and point to implications for future research. Keywords: Assortative mating · Educational Homogamy · International Comparison · Absolute and Relative Homogamy · Consequences of Homogamy · Fertility · Union Dissolution and Divorce · Inequality in Educational Outcomes 1 Introduction “Who mates with and marries whom?” is a classic question in sociology and demography (Berent 1954; Blau/Duncan 1967; Blossfeld/Timm 2003; Blossfeld 2009; Comparative Population Studies Vol. 49 (2024): 437-466 (Date of release: 20.11.2024) Federal Institute for Population Research 2024 URL: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de DOI: https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2024-17 URN: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-17en3 * This editorial has been peer reviewed. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2024-17 • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk438 Hout 1982; Kalmijn 1998; Mare 1991; Schwartz 2013; Ultee/Luijkx 1990). The question carries great importance because the rate of mating between individuals with the same socioeconomic and cultural characteristics – also known as homogamy or assortative mating – is both a measure of a society’s level of social cohesion and of social inequality (Kalmijn 1998; Mare 1991; Schwartz/Mare 2005). High rates of homogamy indicate strong social boundaries between groups and can lead to an erosion of social cohesion through reduced intergroup contact (Kalmijn 1998) and to widening social divides – socially, economically, culturally, and politically (McLanahan 2004; Norris/Inglehart 2019; Reckwitz 2019). High rates of socioeconomic homogamy signal low openness of a society’s social structure (Berent 1954; Blossfeld 2009; Mare 2016; Ultee/Luijkx 1990) and can exacerbate social inequalities in current and future generations, for example, by affecting children’s education. In this special issue, we focus on changes and consequences of educational homogamy. We do so because patterns of educational homogamy have implications for many aspects of life, including couple stability, the division of paid and unpaid labour, fertility decisions, the reproduction of inequalities through couple formation, the distribution of resources between households, and health. In addition, patterns of educational homogamy are likely to have changed substantially in recent decades due to the educational expansion and gender gap reversals in education that have occurred in all Western industrialised countries (DiPrete/Buchmann 2013; Esteve et al. 2016; Grow/Van Bavel 2015; Schofer/Meyer 2005; Van Bavel et al. 2018). For example, educational expansion implies a greater likelihood of meeting and mating with higher-educated individuals, which should increase educational homogamy among higher-educated individuals and decrease educational homogamy among lower-educated individuals (Grow/Van Bavel 2015; Kalmijn 1998; Katrňák/Manea 2020). Individuals’ preferences may also have changed as the supply of better- educated partners has increased, raising the minimum level of education they seek in a partner (Schwartz 2013). This special issue provides an updated picture of cross-national and cross- temporal educational homogamy and, following the call of Schwartz (2013), new empirical evidence on the consequences of educational homogamy that are currently understudied. We focus on the consequences of educational homogamy for union dissolution and divorce, fertility, and educational outcomes for the next generation. Before presenting the six studies on educational homogamy and its consequences contained in this special issue, we briefly review the state of the literature. Based on this review, we identify research gaps regarding educational homogamy and its consequences. We then outline how the six studies fill some of these gaps. 2 Patterns and trends in relative and absolute educational homogamy In this section, we first review the empirical evidence on patterns and trends in educational homogamy in Western industrialised countries over the last two decades and then discuss the factors that are thought to be responsible for these patterns and changes. Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 439 2.1 Relative educational homogamy Stratification researchers have mainly focused on relative educational homogamy, i.e., educational assortative mating, holding constant the distribution of spouses’ education. Scholars do this on the assumption that relative homogamy is a more appropriate indicator of social group distance and a society’s openness than absolute homogamy (i.e., the observed patterns of educational assortative mating), as the supply of marriage candidates strongly determines absolute homogamy (Kalmijn 1998: 405; Ultee/Luijkx 1990). Log-linear models are commonly used to study relative educational homogamy and its changes, as they allow the association between partners’ education to be analysed net of (changes in) the supply of marriage candidates (as measured by the educational distributions of men and women in marriage tables). Studies show that educational groups at the top and bottom of the hierarchy are more closed than those in the middle (Hendrickx 1994; Kalmijn 1998: 409; Katrňák/Manea 2020; Uunk et al. 1996). There is also a tendency for marriages to be relatively less common the further apart two educational groups are. According to Kalmijn (1998: 409), the strongest status boundaries exist between university graduates and the lower educational groups. For our review of the empirical evidence on changes in relative educational homogamy before 2000, we rely mainly on Kalmijn (1998). We then complement his review of trends with more recent evidence focusing on the 21st century. Kalmijn (1998) concluded that the empirical evidence on trends in relative educational homogamy does not point in a single direction. For example, a comparative study by Ultee and Luijkx (1990) found that relative educational homogamy on the whole declined slightly in 18 industrialised countries between the Second World War and the 1980s. However, the study found considerable variation in trends across countries, with three countries showing an increase, five showing a decrease, and the remaining ten showing no change. Country-specific analyses revealed either a sharp increase in relative educational homogamy after the Second World War (U.S., Hungary, and Germany), a slight increase (the Netherlands), or stability (Australia and France), but no decline (Kalmijn 1998). Conversely, in a large-scale cross-sectional comparison of 65 countries, Smits, Ultee and Lammers (1998) found an inverted U-shaped association between relative educational homogamy and the level of economic development, indicating a decline in relative educational homogamy in the most developed societies. The largest cross-national comparative trend study of relative educational homogamy at the time, by Smits, Ultee and Lammers (2000) for 60 countries, showed that relative educational homogamy had generally declined. However, the decline was small, related to the 1940s-1970s, and involved a comparison of only two points in time. Moreover, the study showed considerable cross-country variation in the level of relative educational homogamy and its trends. Smits (2003) also found a decline in relative educational homogamy among those with a secondary degree or higher education in 55 countries, but again used rather old data from the 1970s and 1980s. Using more recent data from six European countries between 1990 and 2016 (Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Italy), Katrňák • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk440 and Manea (2020) also observed a trend towards weaker relative homogamy among those with tertiary education. However, they noted that relative homogamy became stronger among people from lower educational groups. These education-specific trends were quite similar across the countries analysed. 2.2 Absolute educational homogamy Although measures of relative educational homogamy may be better indicators of societies’ openness (Kalmijn 1998: 405; Ultee/Luijkx 1990), measures of absolute educational homogamy (i.e., the observed patterns of educational assortative mating) are also important and informative. Absolute educational homogamy affects several important social outcomes and has implications for social cohesion and socio-economic inequalities in current and future generations (Leesch/Skopek 2023; Schwartz 2010, 2013). Ultee and Luijkx (1990) found that absolute educational homogamy declined after the Second World War until the 1980s, but they also observed considerable cross-country variation in levels and trends. A more recent study by De Hauw, Grow and Van Bavel (2017) found little change in absolute educational homogamy across 28 European countries, covering the birth cohorts of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In contrast, Katrňák and Manea’s (2020) observed an increase in absolute educational homogamy in six European countries between 1990 and 2016. Studies on absolute educational homogamy often distinguish between couples where the man is more educated than his partner (hypergamy) and couples where the woman is more educated than her partner (hypogamy). There have been several trend studies on educational hypergamy and hypogamy. Mare (1991) observed a decline in hypergamy in the U.S. Esteve, Garcia-Román and Permanyer (2012) compared changes in hypergamy in 56 countries between the 1970s and 2000s, also finding a decrease. More recently, De Hauw, Grow and Van Bavel (2017) looked at 28 European countries, comparing respondents born in the 1950s and the 1970s, and documented a decline in hypergamy and an increase in hypogamy (De Hauw et al. 2017: 456). De Hauw, Grow and Van Bavel (2017) also compared hypergamy and hypogamy with remaining single. They observed that in younger cohorts, highly educated women are increasingly more likely to marry downwards than to remain single, and medium-educated women are less likely to marry upwards. Men, on the other hand, are not more likely to marry upwards and are more likely to remain single. Erát (2021) confirms these findings using the same dataset but more refined cohort measures. Similar conclusions on the decline of female hypergamy are reached by Katrňák and Manea (2020) for six European countries between 1990 and 2016 and by Han (2022) for 34 developed and emerging countries between the 1960s and 2015. 2.3 Drivers of variation in assortative mating Mating behaviour is the result of a combination of factors (Blossfeld 2009; Kalmijn 1998; Schwartz 2013). Using mate selection theories, scholars have generally Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 441 emphasised three factors in mate selection: (a) the constraints or opportunities of the marriage market in which individuals seek a spouse (“the structural component”), (b) individuals’ preferences for certain characteristics in a spouse, and (c) the influence of the social group to which individuals belong (“third parties” and the family origin; for a more detailed review of theories and factors of assortative mating see Kalmijn 1998 and Schwartz 2013). Comparative research on educational homogamy has rarely used micro-level theories of mate choice, and their drivers have not been extensively tested (but see Han 2022; Leesch/Skopek 2023). One reason for this is that absolute homogamy patterns have been seen as less important for social stratification, and that marriage market constraints have largely been considered as something to “control for” rather than to focus on. Another reason is that conventional survey data provide little insight into mate choice processes or the relevance of preferences. Scholars investigating cross-temporal and cross-national variation in relative educational homogamy have mainly focused on factors affecting societal openness. Ultee and Luijkx (1990) found that a country’s social mobility and social democracy reduce the extent of relative educational homogamy. Smits, Ultee and Lammers (1998) found that the level of economic development (inverted U-shape effect; see also Smits et al. 2000), the degree of political democracy (negative effect), a country’s dominant religion, and the technological background of developing countries (mixed effects) affect relative educational homogamy. Bouchet-Valat (2018) also showed an effect of economic development (negative effect) on relative educational homogamy at the regional level, comparing 149 regions in 26 countries in the European Union. Domanski and Przybysz (2007) documented that political democracy and post-communist status lowered relative educational homogamy among European countries, but found no effects of economic development and a country’s dominant religion. Katrňák, Fučík and Luijkx (2012), in addition, demonstrated that a country’s intergenerational educational reproduction is positively associated with relative educational homogamy. Nevertheless, a few comparative studies of educational homogamy highlight the importance of more immediate mate selection factors, derived from theories of mate selection. Blau (1977; Blau et al. 1982) was one of the first scholars to study the effects of marriage market constraints on homogamy patterns. He emphasised that the effects of these marriage market constraints, such as group size, sex ratio, and heterogeneity, were non-trivial and important. Relative group size was negatively associated with outmarriage (e.g., for black outmarriage and occupational intermarriage), and a population’s heterogeneity was positively associated with intermarriage (e.g., racial intermarriage; Blau et al. 1982). A recent cross-national comparative study by Permanyer, Esteve, and Garcia (2019) studies the effect of such factors on educational homogamy, focusing on the effects of educational expansion, the reversal of the gender gap in education, and assortative mating on a country’s absolute educational homogamy. Permanyer, Esteve, and Garcia (2019) found that the expansion of university education was the main driver of the increase in absolute educational homogamy, rather than the reversal of the gender gap in education, or assortative mating (which barely increased). Leesch and Skopek (2023), • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk442 comparing cohorts for Ireland, also demonstrated that educational expansion, but not assortative mating, was responsible for the increase in educational homogamy. In addition, they found that changes in the educational gradient in marriage – more educated women are now more likely to marry or cohabit than less educated women – contributed in part to the increase in educational homogamy. This finding seems to support the role of marriage market opportunities for mate selection. On the other hand, educational expansion implies fewer opportunities for educational homogamy among the less educated, something which Permanyer, Esteve, and Garcia (2019) did not investigate. The importance of marriage market constraints and the “logic of numbers” has also been emphasised in studies explaining differences in socioeconomic hypergamy and hypogamy across time and countries. Drawing on Blau’s (1977) macro-sociological ideas about the effects of gender imbalance, scholars have been interested in whether the reversal of the gender gap in education would lead to women marrying up less often and marrying down more often. Erát (2021) finds evidence for this “squeeze” hypothesis, showing a strong negative correlation between a country’s female educational advantage and hypergamy. Interestingly, this correlation was weaker for younger cohorts. Han (2022) also supported this hypothesis in a large-scale cross-national comparison of educational hypogamy. However, Han (2022) pointed to a possible alternative interpretation, namely that the extent of educational hypogamy could also be related to the economic empowerment of college-educated women, according to which economically successful women would be less attractive in marriage markets. He found an effect of economic empowerment even after controlling for the mating squeeze effect. In most countries, however, the empowerment effect was smaller than the squeeze effect. De Hauw, Grow and Van Bavel (2017) further supported the squeeze hypothesis with cross-national comparative data. Highlighting the need to study assortative mating from a dynamic perspective, Corti and Scherer (2021) investigate the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of first intimate unions in Germany (1985-2018). They integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating (De Hauw et al. 2017) with a focus on mating dynamics and measures of the partner market over the life course (Eckhard/Stauder 2019). The results for Germany show that the local education-specific mating squeeze influences partnership formation, timing, and educational sorting and that, in line with search theory (Lewis/Oppenheimer 2000), the mating squeeze decreases after the age of 30. This applies both to the risk of remaining single and to the risk of forming a hypogamous partnership. The effects of (gendered) educational expansion on mating patterns can also be interpreted in terms of changing preferences for educational homogamy, e.g., raising the minimum level of education that people seek in a partner (Schwartz 2013). Research on mate selection has rarely examined the influence of preferences and normative influences (such as peers or family) on mate choice (Kalmijn 1998). This is largely because conventional survey data often do not include information on the processes of mate search or the relevance of preferences and norms. However, online Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 443 dating data and agent-based modelling are promising solutions to address some of these research gaps (Grow/Van Bavel 2019), although findings from selected online dating samples may not be generalisable to broader populations (Van Bavel 2021). Online dating data often include information about users’ partner preferences and the frequency of interactions. Useful insights can also be gained from simulations. Agent-based modelling allows researchers to make assumptions about structural constraints, preferences and norms, and to feed these into computer simulations along with empirical information (Grow/Van Bavel 2019). These models can be used to test whether particular preference assumptions and structural constraints lead to observable empirical patterns of homogamy and whether different preference patterns can lead to similar outcomes (Grow/Van Bavel 2019). The original contribution by Uunk (2024) in this special issue adds to the literature on educational homogamy by providing updated information on trends and cross- national differences in absolute and relative educational homogamy in Europe in total and by educational group. In addition, he investigates the effect of structural opportunities for mate selection by examining how various factors of the educational distribution of populations (e.g., educational expansion, heterogeneity, and gender symmetry) affect educational homogamy. 3 Consequences of homogamy While patterns of educational assortative mating have been extensively studied, at least descriptively, the consequences of homogamy remain an under-studied topic in the literature. This special issue aims to address this shortcoming. Patterns of educational homogamy and their change have implications for many aspects of life, including couple instability, the division of paid and unpaid labour (Blossfeld/Buchholz 2009; Bonke/Esping-Andersen 2011; Dechant/Schulz 2014; England/Srivastava 2013; Greenstein 1996; Grow et al. 2017; Miller 2020; Raley et al. 2012; Theunis et al. 2018), fertility decisions (Nitsche et al. 2018; Trimarchi/Van Bavel 2020), the reproduction of inequalities through couple formation (Mare/Schwartz 2006; Schwartz 2013), the distribution of resources between households (Azollini et al. 2023; Breen/Salazar 2010, 2011; Breen/Andersen 2012; Breen/Ermisch 2017; Cancian/Schoeni 1998; Grotti/ Scherer 2016; Grow/Van Bavel 2020; Harkness 2013; Klesment/Van Bavel 2017; Lawrence/Breen 2016; Salverda et al. 2009; Van Bavel/Klesment 2017), and health (Abufhele et al. 2022; Pesando 2022; Potarca/Rossier 2022; Rauscher 2020). This issue covers empirical findings on three of these consequences: fertility, divorce, and the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality. With the changes in educational homogamy described above – greater absolute educational homogamy among the higher-educated and smaller educational homogamy among the lower- educated (Katrňák/Manea 2020, see also Uunk in this issue) – the consequences of educational pairings are expected to have undergone corresponding changes. Hypogamy is particularly interesting from this perspective, as women’s educational levels continue to rise and couples in which the woman has a higher level of education violate traditional Western gender norms. As hypogamy becomes more common • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk444 (Schwartz/Han 2014), this status inversion gets normalised, and consequently, some of the consequences previously associated with these partnerships may no longer be relevant (Miller 2020). To underscore the need for this special issue, we also conducted a Web of Science (WoS) search for the three consequences of educational homogamy that we study (divorce and separation, fertility, and the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality). We used WoS’s advanced search tool to search SSCI-ranked journal articles published between 1980 and 2023 (see the appendix for information on the exact search algorithms). We then sifted through the results and selected the journal articles relevant to our special issue. In total, we found four articles on the consequences for fertility and seven articles each on the consequences for divorce and separation and on the consequences for the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality. Although our literature search is by no means exhaustive, and these lists can be supplemented by publications not found by the search algorithm (which we discuss below), our search results underscore that the consequences of educational homogamy have been a neglected research topic for over 40 years. Before reviewing existing studies in these areas, we provide a brief overview of how educational homogamy has been operationalised in the literature. 3.1 Operationalising homogamy Couples and family members are generally assumed to share the same living conditions and life chances, be interdependent, and benefit from family relationships (Blossfeld/Buchholz 2009; Kalmijn 1998; Sørensen 1994: 32-33). Consequently, all members of a family share a unitary position in the stratification hierarchy. Researchers have determined this social position either through a focus on (a) the (typically male) head of the household, as in the conventional approach of traditional class theory (Goldthorpe 1983, 1984), or (b) the highest present position, as in the dominance approach (Erikson 1984). Although originally developed for social class measures, these approaches have also been applied to education or status measures to define a family’s position in society (Sørensen 1994: 33). However, all these proposals do not take into account that each partner can make a significant contribution to the family that is either substitutive or complementary (Becker 1993; Oppenheimer 1994: 333-334). Therefore, an individual-level approach (as opposed to a family- level approach) has been proposed for analysing homogamy’s consequences for social outcomes (Sørensen 1994). This approach, however, often falls short when considering the relative resources within the couple (Grow/Van Bavel 2020; Klesment/ Van Bavel 2017; Van Bavel/Klesment 2017). For many outcomes, including resource- pooling and bargaining, both the level and the relative combination of resources among partners is important (Oppenheimer 1994). Taking into account sex-specific resources, the distinction of hyper- or hypogamy has been proposed, depending on which of the two sexes has the higher level of the resource in question (Becker 1993). In addition, for some research interests, it might be important to examine whether the consequences of couples’ resource combinations depend on their level (Becker et al. 2018; Blossfeld/Buchholz 2009; Mare 2016). Although this reasoning Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 445 can, in principle, be applied to any resource, we focus on education in this special issue. These substantive and methodological issues of measuring social positions in terms of educational pairings have become more important over time because the composition of educational resources within couples has changed substantively given massive educational expansion in which women have caught up or even overtaken men in educational attainment (DiPrete/Buchmann 2013). To account for the different resource combinations of couples, various operationalisations of homogamy and heterogamy (the latter of which is sometimes further differentiated into hypergamy and hypogamy) have been used in the literature (both for parental background and own partnership situation), and which measurement should be preferred depends on the research question and theoretical framework (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). A methodological debate on the different operationalisations in the literature (for further information, see Edwards 2002, Eeckhaut et al. 2013 and Luo 2022) is still underway (Abufhele et al. 2022: 12). The first option is to construct difference scores (Eeckhaut et al. 2013), based on metric measures of education. We can distinguish between (a) absolute difference scores, (b) squared difference scores and (c) algebraic difference scores (Edwards 2002). The difference scores of options (a) and (b) only have positive values and can, therefore, only distinguish homogamy from heterogamy. Option (c) can also have negative values and can differentiate homogamy from hypergamy and hypogamy. In all these measures, the distance in the education of both partners can be accounted for (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). Difference measures are also possible with categorical variables, distinguishing homogamy from hypergamy and hypogamy (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). In this simple form, categorical difference measures do not contain information about the educational distance between partners. An advantage of difference measures is that they provide a straightforward method for examining the moderating role of high or low educational resources for homogamy and heterogamy. Another option is to consider the main effects of both partners’ (or parents’) education and include an interaction term in the analysis models (Bratsberg et al. 2023; Eeckhaut et al. 2013; Sørensen 1994: 41-42), which allows to model how the effects of the education of one partner depends on the education of the other partner (Sørensen 1994). Another possibility is to create compound measures that take into account various combinations of partner education (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). If the main effects of partner education are also included in the analysis model, the compound measure is an interaction term (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). If the main effects are not controlled for, the main effects of education are part of the compound measure (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). A further option is to estimate a diagonal reference model (DRM) or a mobility contrast model (MCM) (Eeckhaut et al. 2013; Luo 2022: 165; Sørensen 1994: 41). In these models, homogamous couples are seen as the core of an educational group that is not influenced by any other educational group and this core is compared to educationally mixed groups (Eeckhaut et al. 2013). The papers in this special issue use different operationalisations of resource combination: all contributions examine details in the relative distribution of resources; some not only account for level effects but also examine the relevance of relative resources according to the level of education. • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk446 3.2 Homogamy, partnership stability, and divorce risk Education and its pairing between partners can influence a couple’s stability in several ways. This is because education is an indicator of tastes, values, and attitudes, as well as of an individual’s labour market prospects and earning potential, and thus socioeconomic status. In general, education makes marriages more stable: marriages with at least one highly educated partner tend to be less prone to divorce (Frimmel et al. 2013; Härkönen/Dronkers 2006; Hogendoorn et al. 2022; Theunis et al. 2018). Traditionally, hypergamous couples were expected to have the highest marital stability, as specialisation in paid and domestic work increases the gains from marriage (Becker et al. 1977). Frimmel, Halla and Winter-Ebner (2013) find support for this in Austrian administrative data. At the same time, however, social and cultural similarity promotes consensus between partners on tastes and values and reduces potential conflict over divergent goals (Kalmijn 2003; Kalmijn et al. 2005). This suggests that homogamous couples are more stable than heterogamous couples. Another factor contributing to union instability is social disapproval from families and peers, which is more likely to occur when social boundaries are crossed, especially in heterogamous unions. If a couple violates conventional norms, as is the case with hypogamous couples in Western societies, social disapproval might become even more relevant. This also suggests that the distinction between hypergamous and hypogamous couples is important. Unconventional combinations may be particularly unstable in contexts where gender equality is not (yet) promoted (Cooke 2006; Theunis et al. 2018; Gonalons-Pons/Gangl 2021) and where unconventional, heterogamous combinations are least common (Grow et al. 2017; Schwartz/Han 2014). Several studies suggest that educational homogamy may contribute to partnership stability, but research on the impact of educational homogamy on partnership stability yields mixed results and suggests that the relationship between marital dissolution and the relative status of spouses is both historical and context- specific (Cooke 2006; Gonalons-Pons/Gangl 2021). In their review study, Wagner and Weiss (2003) report no strong support for the idea that educational pairings are determinants of divorce risk in Germany. Kraft and Neimann (2009) also find only limited support for the notion that educational homogamy increases marital stability in Germany, while higher levels of education and religiosity do. However, women’s educational advantage (hypogamy) in Germany is associated with a higher risk of union dissolution (Arpino et al. 2022). Fučík (2023) shows for the Czech Republic that homogamy as such does not lead to more stable partnerships. Tzeng (1992) finds for first marriages in the United States (U.S.) that couples with heterogamous education and non-traditional work arrangements are at higher risk of marital instability. For Austria, results suggest that hypogamous couples are most likely to divorce (Frimmel et al. 2013). In Finland (Mäenpää/Jalovaara 2014) and Israel (Kaplan/Herbst 2015), homogamy reduces the risk of separation, but only for the highly educated. Furthermore, extreme heterogamy increases the divorce risk in Finland (Mäenpää/ Jalovaara 2014). Schwartz and Han (2014) and Grow et al. (2017) document relevant changes in the educational matching and divorce risk in the U.S.: while marriages in Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 447 which the wives had an educational advantage were more likely to dissolve in the past, this is no longer the case for more recent marriage cohorts, as partnerships have become less “traditional” and more gender egalitarian. In line with this idea, Schmid and Wagner (2023) document corresponding changes for West Germany and for younger cohorts: a less traditional division of labour is no longer associated with a higher divorce risk. Grow et al. (2017) suggest that these changes in the consequences of homogamy are due to structural changes in the marriage market (the availability of alternative partners) rather than cultural changes. Overall, it appears that as the social acceptance of hypogamous or homogamous educational pairings increases, the risk of union dissolution becomes more similar to other, more “traditional” combinations. The normative context has also proved relevant in other comparative studies on this topic. For example, Gonalons-Pons and Gangl (2021) found that violations of the male-breadwinner norm were most strongly associated with marital dissolution in countries with more traditional gender cultures. In line with Kalmijn (2003), the above results strongly support the social channels of union stability – i.e., the “cultural” similarity and social recognition – as well as the importance of contextual factors, including normative power relations. Most of this literature has focused on marriage, although cohabitation is becoming increasingly relevant. In this special issue, the studies by Mazzeo and colleagues (2024) on Germany and by Corti and colleagues (2024) on Italy contribute to this area of research. 3.3 Homogamy and fertility The relationship between partners’ educations and fertility is also complex and context-dependent. There is evidence that women’s higher education reduces the number of children (Becker et al. 2012; Chen/Guo 2022; Cygan-Rehm/Maeder 2013; Kim 2016; Ntoimo/Mutanda 2017), mainly by postponing marriage and childbearing. Monteiro da Silva, Campos de Lima and Ferreira (2022) show that changes in the educational combination of partners account for about one-third of the decline in cohort fertility in Brazil. However, more recent findings in Europe and the U.S. indicate that although highly educated individuals are having children later, they are having more children (Nitsche et al. 2018). In contrast, DeCicca and Krashinsky (2023) show for Canada that education tends to “compress” fertility, leading to a higher likelihood of having at least one child, but a lower likelihood of having multiple children. Indeed, education affects first births and parity progression differently. The literature suggests that there may be a trade-off between the quantity of children and the quality with which one can raise them (Vargha/Donehower 2019), which may be more relevant for the highly educated who have to accept higher costs of children to avoid downward social mobility (Breen/Goldthorpe 1997). At the contextual level, the nature of gender roles prevalent in a country (in terms of the equality of men and women in the private and public spheres) is likely to shape the relevance of education for family decisions. Some authors argue that a reversal of the initial negative association between education and fertility will occur as gender equality progresses (Goldscheider et al. 2015). • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk448 There are several channels linking education and its combination in partners to fertility. Employment situation, occupation, and income are important mediators of this association. In many countries of the Western world, women’s employment no longer seems to hinder fertility. In fact, the relationship has become positive (Ahn/ Mira 2002; Kravdal/Rindfuss 2008). An important channel related to educational attainment is the income effect, which facilitates the realisation of fertility desires by coping with costs. According to Oppenheimer’s (1994) pooling of resources approach, highly educated couples have higher current and expected financial resources and security, which enables them to have more children. More recent literature attributes the higher fertility of more educated couples to a more equal division of gender roles in the household. Regardless of their level of education, educational pairing could influence fertility through the quality and stability of their partnerships and through greater equality within the couple, including in the private sphere. In support of this hypothesis, assortative mating has been found to reduce the likelihood of reproductive failure in the U.S. (Huber/Fieder 2011). In the United Kingdom (U.K.), educationally homogamous couples also show higher fertility regardless of social class assortative mating (Krzyżanowska/Mascie-Taylor 2014). Bauer and Jacob (2010) show for Germany that educationally homogamous couples are, on average, more likely to become parents than hypergamous couples and that a traditional education gap at the level of vocational education promotes parenthood. Focusing on completed fertility in Greece, Bagavos (2017) documents that differences in fertility outcomes are largely the result of timing effects, except for low-educated partners, who also have higher completed fertility. Thus, the detailed combination of partners’ education affects fertility progression. Osiewalska (2017) reports that low-educated homogamous partners have the highest fertility (in France, Bulgaria and Austria), while highly educated homogamous partners postpone their first birth but do not differ in terms of their completed fertility. In a comparative study across European countries, Nitsche and colleagues (2018) show that highly educated homogamous couples postpone the first birth in most European countries but have a high probability of second and third births. The authors also report that hypergamous couples with a highly educated man and a less educated woman have the lowest second birth transitions – a finding that contradicts the idea of specialisation in “new home economics” (Becker 1993). Osiewalska (2017) shows that hypogamy is associated with fewer children in Bulgaria and Austria, but not in France. A paper in this special issue by Nitsche (2024) adds to this literature by examining first and second births in the U.S. 3.4 Homogamy and the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality In the literature, few retrospective and prospective studies analyse the intergenerational transmission and reproduction of educational inequalities through parental homogamy. The retrospective approach examines the link between family background and children’s educational attainment starting from the children’s generation. However, Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 449 not many studies have examined the consequence of parental homogamy as a characteristic of family background. To date, to the best of our knowledge, only five country studies have analysed the association between parental homogamy and children’s educational outcomes, covering South Korea (Byun et al. 2020), the U.K. (Gonzalez-Sancho 2012), Denmark (Bingley et al. 2023) and the U.S. (Beck/González- Sancho 2009; Edwards/Roff 2016). In addition, only one international comparative study has examined the association between parental homogamy/heterogamy and gender-specific educational outcomes across European countries (Ortiz-Gervasi 2021). Theoretically, it is argued that children from educationally homogamous parents should have better educational opportunities due to the pooling of resources, greater agreement on parenting styles, and a lower risk of divorce of their parents. All the mentioned studies suggest that parental homogamy/heterogamy is important for children’s educational outcomes. However, little research has examined whether this association is moderated by parental education (Byun et al. 2020). For example, the resource pooling argument expects a positive association between parental homogamy and children’s educational outcomes only when parents are highly educated. The retrospective study by Blossfeld, Katrňák, and Chromková Manea (2024) in this special issue helps to fill this gap in the literature and explores how parental homogamy affects children’s educational opportunities in different European countries and shows how this association is moderated by parental education. In the retrospective approach, the starting point for the analysis is a representative sample of children who are asked about their parents. Duncan (1966) pointed out that the distribution of parents in retrospective studies does not represent a real distribution at a particular historical time because (1) parents have their children at different ages, (2) childless individuals are not part of the parent sample, and (3) parents may have multiple children and thus be overrepresented. However, Duncan (1966) concluded that these objections are not problematic for the analysis of the direct transmission between parents’ and children’s education (such as parents’ influence on children’s school performance and educational decisions; Boudon 1974). However, if one is interested in (1) the total effect and different pathways of an educational investment in a birth cohort on their offspring’s educational attainment (Breen/Ermisch 2017; Lawrence/Breen 2016) or (2) how distributions at one point in time are transformed into distributions of the next generation, intermediate demographic processes of social reproduction must be considered (Maralani 2013; Song/Mare 2015). For example, higher education in a parental cohort may have consequences for mate choice, likelihood of marriage, and childbearing. In recent years, retrospective studies have been complemented by prospective studies. These prospective studies examine how educational mobility processes are mediated by demographic processes of social reproduction (Hillmert 2013, 2015; Maralani 2023; Mare 1997; Mare/Maralani 2006; Mare/Schwartz 2006; Skopek/Leopold 2020). The focus is therefore shifting from social mobility to social reproduction, taking into account demographic processes (Corti/Scherer 2022). However, these analyses remain rare due to high data requirements, especially in an international • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk450 comparative perspective (Breen/Ermisch 2017; Breen et al. 2019). The starting point for these analyses is a representative sample of respondents at a specific historical point in time who are asked about their descendants (Song/Mare 2015). These studies take into account that (1) not all members of a parental cohort contribute to intergenerational reproduction because they remain childless, and (2) some but not all studies collect information on all children of the respondents (Song/ Mare 2015). The prospective approach is interested in how individuals belonging to different social groups (typically defined by education) vary in the timing and level of marriage, divorce, remarriage, homogamy, fertility, parental and child survival, adoption, and migration (Song/Mare 2015), and therefore have different probabilities of having offspring. Existing prospective research has mainly examined differences in assortative mating and fertility processes. As this special issue is concerned with the consequences of assortative mating, we will concentrate on this demographic channel of educational reproduction. Studies from Indonesia (Mare/Maralani 2006 2006), South Korea (Kye/Mare 2012), the U.S. (Song/Mare 2017; Lawrence/Breen 2016), the U.K. (Breen/Ermisch 2017), Norway (Bratsberg et al. 2023), and Germany (Corti/Scherer 2022; Hillmert 2013, 2015) show that assortative mating is relevant, at least for the social reproduction of women (Breen/Ermisch 2017; Corti/Scherer 2022). However, assortative mating has become less relevant for the social reproduction of women in Germany over time (Corti/Scherer 2022). For the U.S., Maralani (2013) also finds black-white differences in the importance of assortative mating for the educational reproduction of women. A comparative paper by Breen et al. (2019) on twelve countries (Italy, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Poland, and Austria) suggests that assortative mating is important for educational reproduction. Nevertheless, international comparative studies on the effects of parental homogamy on educational reproduction are still rare. The cross-national study by Wittemann and Yastrebov (2024) in this special issue fills a gap in the literature by extending the analysis to Eastern European countries with a cohort comparison. 4 Contributions and conclusions of this special issue 4.1 Contributions This special issue, “Changes in educational homogamy and its consequences,” presents six original studies. The contribution by Uunk (2024) responds to the need for an up- to-date, large-scale description of educational homogamy and an assessment of its drivers. The study “Trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in Europe: The role of educational composition” investigates changes in educational homogamy and extends previous findings by describing and explaining country and cohort differences in absolute and relative educational homogamy in Europe by educational group, focusing on the role of educational composition characteristics. His aggregate-level regression analyses on 36 countries and five birth cohorts (1940-1989) from seven waves of the European Social Survey show that absolute Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 451 educational homogamy has decreased for less educated people and increased for more educated people, while relative educational homogamy has hardly changed. Regression analyses of the cross-country cohort variation in educational homogamy show, in line with Blau’s theory of structural opportunity effects on intermarriage (Blau 1977; Blau et al. 1982), that the population’s educational composition strongly affects rates of absolute educational homogamy. Educational gender symmetry, educational income inequality, and educational reproduction increase rates of absolute educational homogamy, educational heterogeneity decreases these rates, and educational expansion increases absolute educational homogamy among the more educated. Educational composition characteristics also affect rates of relative educational homogamy, but only in terms of gender symmetry and educational reproduction. The results suggest that further educational expansion may increase absolute educational homogamy among the better educated, but that the growing female advantage in education weakens absolute educational homogamy through opportunities for intermarriage. This first contribution is followed by studies focussing on the consequences of homogamy. Research on the consequences of educational pairing remains limited, and a straightforward consideration of contextual factors is underdeveloped. Four of the five studies adopt a comparative perspective, across cohorts, contexts, or both. The contribution by Mazzeo et al. (2024) on union stability considers contextual variation in terms of within-German differences and changes over time, while the study by Corti et al. (2024) focuses on cohort succession within Italy. Mazzeo, Schwartz, Scherer, and Vitali, in their contribution “Trends in Women’s Educational Advantage and Divorce in East and West Germany”, use SOEP data to investigate how the relevance of educational pairing varies across contexts, comparing East and West Germany across cohorts. The authors report a lower stability of educational hypogamous marriages in West Germany, while this is not the case in East Germany. Their finding is consistent with the idea that higher gender equality in the East fosters stability of non-traditional educational pairings. The lack of significant cohort differences confirms that notable differences between East and West Germany persist after reunification. In the contribution by Corti, Bellani, Guarneri, and Rinesi, “Partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in Italy: A cohort comparison”, the focus is not on educational homogamy but on age homogamy. Using data from the Families and Social Subjects survey, the authors examine the association between the relative age of spouses and the risk of divorce and its change over cohorts for Italy, documenting a stability premium for hypergamous couples (men older), which, however, weakens for more recent marriage cohorts, as divorce risks also increase for these more traditional pairings. Among the consequences of assortative mating, fertility behaviour has recently received increasing attention, but little is known about the relevance of educational homogamy and the relative resources between partners. Focusing on the U.S., the paper “Relative Resources in Couples and Their Childbearing Behaviour in the U.S.” by Nitsche (2024) provides insights into the variation in fertility patterns due to differences in bargaining over fertility within heterogamous and homogamous couples. The author shows that first births are not related to the relative education • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk452 of the partners, but highly educated homogamous couples have a higher risk of second births. Interestingly, and in line with the idea of changing gender roles, relative income and gender-specific work arrangements show no association with childbearing. Finally, the consequences of parental assortative mating for the intergenerational transmission of inequality are examined, which is also a largely under-researched topic. In this special issue, two complementary contributions, both of which compare European countries, are devoted to how parental homogamy and homophily are related to educational inequality in the next generation. A retrospective study by Blossfeld, Katrňák, and Chromková Manea (2024), “Parental educational homogamy and children’s educational attainment in Europe”, sheds light on how different constellations of parental educational pairings are related to their children’s educational outcomes for a large number of European countries and how this association is moderated by parental education. They find that parental homogamy increases the likelihood of children obtaining a tertiary degree in European countries. However, this association varies across countries. In addition, they show that parental homogamy increases the probability to obtain a tertiary degree particularly of children from higher educated families. In contrast, the study by Wittemann and Yastrebov (2024), “Untangling the Role of Assortative Mating in Prospective Educational Mobility in Twelve European Countries”, takes a prospective approach and uses data from the Generations and Gender Survey and a series of prospective datasets to examine how demographic mechanisms such as assortative mating and the related fertility behaviour contribute to the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality in twelve European countries. They find that fertility does not play a large role in the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality, but that parental homogamy does. Overall, this special issue covers a wide range of geographical areas in Europe and the US and each article addresses an understudied issue of homogamy. 4.2 Conclusions Notwithstanding the contributions in this special issue, future research needs to address a number of open points to improve our understanding of educational homogamy and its consequences. Among the factors explaining patterns of assortative mating, changing structural opportunities and changing preferences figure prominently. Direct measures of preferences are almost non-existent, and we still need a much better assessment of the role of different structural opportunities for educational homogamy – including institutional factors such as the selectivity of higher education institutions (Uchikoshi 2022), residential segregation of educational groups (Blau/Schwartz 1984), and the overlap (“intersection”; Blau 1977) between education and other socioeconomic and cultural factors. Some recent proposals for assessing structural constraints regarding mating squeezes have been developed for Germany (Eckhard/Stauder 2019), but have not yet been proposed in other contexts. In order to disentangle the relevance of preferences from structural constraints (mating squeeze), looking at dynamics over the life- course is indispensable (Eckhard et al. 2015). Partnership formation criteria and Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 453 their consequences may depend crucially on life course stages and previous experiences (Corti/Scherer 2021; Oppenheimer 1994; Van Bavel 2021). However, most studies of assortative mating are static in nature, based on cross-sectional data, or concerned with documenting trends in assortative mating over time, ignoring the temporal dynamics over individuals’ life-courses (Blossfeld 2009). While this may be appropriate when traditional and standardised life courses prevail (Brückner/Mayer 2005), patterns of family formation have become more complex for more recent cohorts (Kalmijn et al. 2019; Thomson 2014; Van Winkle 2018), making a longitudinal perspective essential. In addition, it would be important to examine the extent to which couples become more similar over the life course through imitation, similar lifestyles, and shared environments (Versluys et al. 2021). We therefore hope to see more life course research on educational homogamy in the future. New opportunities to study micro-level processes of how individuals search for mates, what characteristics they look for, and how they interact with potential partners may also emerge given new data from online dating (Skopek 2023). The emergence of dating websites and apps has radically changed how people find partners in recent years (Rosenfeld 2018). For example, recent studies in the U.S. and Switzerland show that online dating has become an increasingly more common way to find a partner (Rosenfeld et al. 2019; Potarca 2020). In Switzerland, it is mainly dating apps that dominate (Potarca 2020). These changes in opportunities for meeting a partner may have implications for changes in homogamy patterns and their consequences. For example, a pressing question for sociologists and demographers is whether online dating has increased or decreased assortative mating. This is still an under-researched topic, and more studies are needed in the future (Lichter/Qian 2019). On the one hand, it can be argued that online dating allows individuals to choose more effectively according to their preference for similarity (Kalmijn 1998). On the other hand, online dating offers a larger pool of potential partners with different socioeconomic characteristics (Schwartz 2013; the “romantic love hypothesis” of Smits et al. 1998). For example, empirical studies for Germany and Italy show that individuals prefer similarly educated partners in online dating (Arosio 2022; Skopek et al. 2009, 2011). Other studies for the U.S. and Germany demonstrate that educational homogamy is lower via online platforms than via other intermediaries such as schools and friends (Potarca 2017; Thomas 2020). As the search processes and interaction behaviour of individuals in online dating are (often) collected and tracked without the user’s awareness, these data offer new opportunities to investigate mechanisms of assortative mating (Skopek 2023). However, a major drawback (besides the general “big data” issues such as representativeness) is that online dating data is private and generally kept under lock and key by the providers, making it difficult for social scientists to gain access to this data (Lichter/Qian 2019; Skopek 2023). In the future, increased and trusted collaboration between platform operators and researchers is needed to gain access to this valuable data on homogamy (Skopek 2023). As we argued above, research on the consequences of educational pairing is still scarce, and we are only beginning to understand the contextual circumstances, such as normative settings, under which the consequences of particular pairings • Pia Blossfeld, Stefani Scherer, Wilfred Uunk454 change. Normative (dis-)approval by third parties is usually cited as an explanation for the changing consequences of hypogamy, which seems to have lost its stability penalty for recent cohorts. However, there is also evidence that individuals who form hypogamous unions are (less so today) negatively selected on some other dimensions, such as age or earnings (Chudnovskaya/Kashyap 2020; Qian 2017), suggesting that focusing on one trait is too reductive. Considering the combination of various traits, such as education, occupation, age, or ethnic homo-/heterogamy, is extremely rare in the literature but would be crucial for understanding the mechanisms at play. Whether and how different traits are traded off against each other is a classic interest of sociological research (Voland/Engel 1990). Examples include richer men finding younger and more beautiful wives, lower educated men being more likely to mate women with a migration background than other education groups (Vignoli et al. 2017), or racial intermarriages coming with status exchange (Xie/Dong 2021). However, this evidence has not often made its way into this research stream. The presence of important trade-offs could also mean that heterogamy on one trait increases homogamy on another trait. For instance, by “marrying up,” some women have managed to update on other dimensions, which in turn may lead to greater socioeconomic homogamy between partners (Lichter/ Qian 2019: 306). We hope to see more studies that simultaneously consider different dimensions of homogamy (education, occupation, age, etc.), to explore mating dynamics and the consequences of homogamy. Most research on couple formation and stability takes a very traditional view of families, focusing mainly on heterosexual marriages. However, in all contexts, cohabitation without marriage has increased substantially, and children are often born out of wedlock. Marriage, in turn, may have become more selective, leading to a partial view of the consequences of educational pairing. Mazzeo et al. (2024) include some controls for cohabitation and show that the results do not depend on a change in the selectivity into marriage. In the 21st century, in many societies, marriage (and family formation) is no longer restricted to heterosexual couples, raising questions about the mechanisms and functioning of different types of families. Future research will also need to pay more attention to same-sex couples, a category that is not easy to study with commonly available data (Lichter/Qian 2019: 315; Schwartz 2013; Van Bavel 2021), although single studies make relevant contributions (see Ciscato et al. (2020) for a recent example). Changing partnership relationships, men’s and women’s educational and occupational choices, and educational and labour market institutions call for continued scholarly attention to intermarriage patterns and their consequences. Acknowledgements The collaboration that led to this special issue benefitted from funding from the Euregio mobility fund VI (2023/24) (project “EdFamELife”). We also thank Mingming Li for his help with the WoS search and the editorial team of Comparative Population Studies for the opportunity to publish this special issue and their feedback on earlier Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences • 455 drafts. 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The AND and OR options are Boolean operators. For fertility: ● TS= (Homogamy AND Fertility) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Assortative Mating AND Fertility) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article For separation and divorce: ● TS= (Homogamy AND Divorce) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Assortative Mating AND divorce OR Assortative mating AND separation) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Homogamy AND Separation) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article For the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality: ● TS= (Homogamy AND children’s education) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Homogamy AND children’s educational achievement) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Homogamy AND educational reproduction) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Assortative Mating AND educational inequality) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Parental homogamy AND education) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article ● TS= (Parental assortative mating AND education) AND PY=(1980-2023) AND DT= Article Date of submission: 16.01.2024 Date of acceptance: 21.06.2024 Dr. Pia Blossfeld, Prof. Dr. Wilfred Uunk. University of Innsbruck. Innsbruck, Austria. E-mail: pia.blossfeld@uibk.ac.at; Wilfred.Uunk@uibk.ac.at URL: https://piablossfeld.github.io/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team- wilfred-uunk/ Prof. Dr. Stefani Scherer (*). University of Trento, Department of Sociology and social research. Trento, Italy. E-mail: stefani.scherer@unitn.it URL: https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/Persona/PER0029584/Didattica mailto:pia.blossfeld@uibk.ac.at mailto:Wilfred.Uunk@uibk.ac.at https://piablossfeld.github.io/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ mailto:stefani.scherer@unitn.it https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/Persona/PER0029584/Didattica Published by Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) 65180 Wiesbaden / Germany Managing Publisher Dr. Nikola Sander 2024 Editor Prof. Dr. Roland Rau Prof. Dr. Heike Trappe Managing Editor Dr. Katrin Schiefer Editorial Assistant Beatriz Feiler-Fuchs Wiebke Hamann Layout Beatriz Feiler-Fuchs E-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de Scientific Advisory Board Kieron Barclay (Stockholm) Karsten Hank (Cologne) Ridhi Kashyap (Oxford) Natalie Nitsche (Canberra) Alyson van Raalte (Rostock) Pia S. 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