I was recently invited to present and participate in a British Sociological Association (BSA) workshop organized by the Early Career Researchers (ECRs) Study Group conveners, Dr Katherine Twamley and Dr Mark Doidge. The title of the workshop ‘What is a Winning Funding Application?’ posed an urgent, anxious question, felt as I planned my delivery and attempted to answer a loaded query, literally worth a lot. I wondered how I would, with colleagues, ‘workshop’ my way out of funding crises and the destruction of UK Higher Education: how to keep things constructive and positive in a harsh new climate? To enable rather than dissuade even as ‘early career’ is ever extended across the career trajectory which means some never ‘arrive’? Read the full story

Gender and Education Association Biennial Conference 2013

Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University

Tuesday 23^rd- Friday 26^th April 2013

Confirmed keynote speakers:

- Prof. Lisa Adkins, University of Newcastle, Australia (What Do Wages Do? Feminist Theory After the Financial Crisis)

- Prof. Val Gillies, Weeks Centre, LSBU (From Baby Brain to Conduct Disorder: the New Determinism in the Classroom)

- Bidisha: From Eastern Primitivism to Western Decadence? Overcoming the Notion of Cultural Differences in Gender, Race and Class Politics

Plenary Panel:

- Dr Tracey Reynolds, Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, LSBU

- Dr Jin Haritaworn, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

- Dr Kay Inckle, Trinity College Dublin

- Dr Jayne Osgood, London Metropolitan University

- Dr Vanita Sundaram, University of York

Performance:

- Dr Claudia Brazzle, Liverpool Hope University

- Teddy Nygh, Director of Riot From Wrong and Co-Founder of Fully Focused

The ninth international Gender and Education Association conference, Compelling Diversities, Educational Intersections hosted by the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, engages with key debates surrounding the interplay between dynamics of education, work, employment and society in the context of crisis, upheaval and cutbacks, which reconfigure axes of intersectional inequalities. In considering diversity in education, this conference will explore the relationship between new equality regimes and continued educational inequalities, exploring organisational ambivalence, change and resistance. It will ask important questions about the role of feminist research at a time when education, and its variously placed subjects (academics, pupils, students, and policy makers), wrestle with the commitments and contentions in doing diversity and being diverse.

Book your place

If you are paying by debit or credit card, please book online using Eventbrite at http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/4743075667

If you wish to receive an invoice or have any queries, please email enterprise-events@lsbu.ac.uk

Conference Fee

£380 – Standard conference booking fee – Member*

£420 – Standard conference booking fee – Non-member

£150 – Standard day rate

* To obtain your discount code, necessary for member discount, please contact Alice Jesmont (a.jesmont@lancaster.ac.uk)

Triumphs:  Story 1

She’s just won a prestigious prize (at a prestigious conference): praise was rightfully delivered and she basked it the glory, in the surprise that seemed to say she’d arrived in academia (early career no more). But she was worried. Did this really signal a safety in arriving, a recognition of value, labour, contributions? Or did it signal more labour, maybe this time without recognition or value? When the stakes are set so high do we have no choice but to keep apace, to endlessly indicate, effect and fear our own (in)capacities? When we compete with colleagues in a competitive university-marketplace – and when competition is so close it is generated by-ourselves-for-ourselves (as ‘keeping up’, ‘what next?’) – what cares, connections, capacities are rendered near and far? I tell her to add her award to her email signature, a neat summary quickly conveying who she is as a hyperlinked bio. But I pause. There’s a borderline between the achieving academic, the celebrity star and the pretentious, (self)promotional subject. I pause. These are laboured cares. Read the full story

As GEA policy officer, I was interested to have the chance to interview Professor Sir Adrian Smith, a very eminent mathematician and former Principal of Queen Mary University of London, on how the current UK Government is approaching policies on higher education and gender. Sir Adrian is the UK Government Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)’ champion for equalities and diversities. He is keen to advance women’s position in universities amongst other inequalities. Read the full story

Have you been watching ‘Borgen’? Some are calling it the new West Wing.  I think it’s even better – because of the strong female Prime Minster at the centre of the drama and the way the show examines the political process, the relationship between media and politics but most importantly – the way politics leaves little room or energy for family life.  By the end of series 1 Birgitte Nyborg appears to have grown into her leadership role, but is also utterly sleep-deprived, separated from her husband and realises that her children are paying a price for her job. Read the full story

On 3rd Feb. 2012 the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research (LSBU) held a BSA Families and Relationship study group day conference ‘Intersecting Family Lives, Locales and Labours’. Plenary talks by Professor Diane Reay and Professor Michele Goodwin will soon be available on the Weeks Centre website. Read the full story

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) has announced that following the consultation on draft panel criteria for the REF, the four UK funding bodies have taken an early decision on the arrangements for taking account of maternity leave in the REF.

An overwhelming majority of respondents to the consultation supported the proposal that researchers may reduce the number of outputs in a submission by one, for each period of maternity leave taken during the REF period. In light of the response, the funding bodies have decided that this approach will be implemented across all panels.

Further details of these arrangements, including arrangements for paternity and adoption leave, will be published as part of the final REF panel criteria and working methods, in January 2012.

My piece ‘Accessions: Researching, Designing Higher Education’ in Gender and Education (23:6) reports on the experiences, effects and (dis)engagements in working alongside designers – as part of a research-design team – to foster a more ‘public sociology’. These are questions, conceptual and methodological, that I have been interested in for some time: this piece, as with other work, asks who becomes the proper subject for (non)academic attention? Questions are raised about the place of a ‘public sociology’ as part of a ‘city publics’ and ‘engaged university’ where understanding local disseminations and disparities is important in considering where different users, interviewees and indeed researchers are coming from. It asks where are we coming from? Why does this matter and how can this be operationalised as a politicised practice (rather than personalized, individualized pain); Where are we going as the direction of Higher Education stalls and changes? When we ‘travel’ in academia do we only credentialise ourselves, becoming more distant from the very audiences, users, and publics which enable our mobility? ‘Accessions’ alludes to academic hierarchies, elitism and ‘becoming’ in and out of the university setting, and continues a concern reflected in a forthcoming Sociological Research Online piece: ‘Placing Research: ‘City Publics’ and the ‘Public Sociologist’ (2011, with Michelle Addison) and a current European Societies piece ‘International and Widening Participation Students’ Experience of Higher Education, UK’ (2011, with Tracy Scurry). Read the full story

The Political Studies Women and Politics Group would like to draw your attention to a serious problem potentially affecting the careers of many women academics. Read the full story