Gabriele Pessl-Falkensteiner is a Researcher in the research group Educational Structures and Educational Opportunities She worked as stipendiary at IHS from 2005 to 2007 and has been member of the academic staff since 2009. She studied Sociology and African Studies at the University of Vienna, obtaining her degrees in 2009 and 2013 (MMag. Phil), respectively.

As an educational sociologist, Gabriele is interested in the connections between educational expansion and inequalities and how educational structures influence educational opportunities. Her focus is on disadvantaged youth, biographies, school dropout, and educational policy. She is currently working on her dissertation about the meanings of discourses on early school leaving (ESL) in the biographies of young people who dropped out of school. She combines biographical research and discourse analysis, both based on a sociology of knowledge approach.