Bianca Thaler is a Researcher in the research group Educational Structures and Educational Opportunities. She joined IHS in 2010 as a Student Assistant and has been part of the research staff since 2013. She studied Sociology and Economics at the University of Vienna and defended her doctoral thesis at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) in 2025.

Her research focuses on student success and social inequalities in higher education. She examines how prior education and individual characteristics such as gender and parental education influence students’ chances of success. Bianca is interested in differences across fields of study and the impact of policy changes such as admission procedures and university funding mechanisms. She mainly uses registry data for quantitative analysis but also uses qualitative data from student interviews to better understand their experiences, challenges and perceptions of success.