Jessy Siongers obtained a Master's Degree in Sociology and a Postgraduate Degree in Cultural Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. In 1996 she started her research career at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel at the Department of Sociology – Research group TOR. Here she obtained her PhD in Sociology with a dissertation on the intergenerational transmission of cultural preferences and values. In 2012 she left the VUB to become the coordinator of the Cultural Policy Research Centre (now Knowledge Centre on Culture and Media Participation) at Ghent University. From September 2016 she combines this coordination function at UGhent with a research function at the TOR-group. At the VUB she is affiliated to the Youth Research Platform (JOP) as a co-promotor and researcher and to the Knowledge Centre on Culture and Media Participation as a researcher.
Her main research interests are situated within the domains of cultural sociology, sociology of education and sociology of youth. Within these research domains she has carried out research and published among others on cultural/arts participation, arts education, cultural profiles of teachers, the ageing of the teaching corps, citizenship attitudes and intergenerational transmission of values and cultural preferences.