Living Parallel Lives

Jess Pilgrim-Brown is a sociologist and researcher in education. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK. She focuses on issues relating to social class, gender and wider social inequalities and has a specific interest in research on research, research culture and professional staff in higher education. Her thesis research ‘Doing the Heavy lifting, the experiences of working-class professional services and administrative staff in Russell Group universities’ was the first of its kind in the UK.

• Chapter 1. IntroductionChapter 2. Being Working-Class in Modern Britain: From Marx to StarmerChapter 3. Between Worlds: Class, Culture, and Higher Education in the UKChapter 4. Prestige Above, Precarity Below: Designing a Research Project With Working-Class Professional Service StaffChapter 5. Negotiating Value in the AcademyChapter 6. Structures, Systems, and (University) Spaces of Opportunity and ConstraintChapter 7. Relationships Between Working-Class Professional Services Staff and Their Social Class HeritageChapter 8. Conclusion: Living Parallel Lives in the Academy

For too long, research on class in higher education has stopped at the lectern. In Living Parallel Lives, Jess Pilgrim-Brown turns our attention to the working-class professional services and administrative staff who keep universities running yet remain almost entirely absent from the literature. Drawing on rich narrative accounts from Russell Group institutions, this pioneering study is rigorous, compassionate and long overdue. A fascinating read, it should be read by anyone concerned with class, inequality and what genuine inclusion in higher education would look like.