Notions

Nyhet

The Lives of Irish Working Class Academics

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

Av Iona Burnell Reilly, Stephen Baker, Michael Pierse

2 279 kr

Kommande

Working-class academics often experience difficult and turbulent times during their journey into and through academia. The terms working class and academic are somewhat paradoxical, as the assumption is, since becoming an academic, they have moved away from their class. For some, this may be true, for others, not so.Presenting a collection of life stories written by Irish-identifying working-class academics, Notions explores the lives of those not born into the elite but occupying an elite position in higher education — how they got there, what their journey was like, what their experiences were, if they faced any struggles, and if they had to, or still do, (re)negotiate their identities.The first autoethnographic collection of working-class experiences of academia in Ireland, Notions is a valuable contribution to the existing body of literature on social class, inequalities, widening participation and higher education that will be of interest to any reader interested in Irish society and culture.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-05-19
Mått152 x 229 x undefined mm
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
FörlagEmerald Publishing Limited
ISBN9781837080359

Tillhör följande kategorier

Sociologi inom Samhalle och politik
Högskola och universitet inom Psykologi och pedagogik
Projektledning inom Ekonomi och ledarskap

Chapter 1. ‘Confin’d within the Verge of their Occupations’: Sectarianism, Class and the Contraction of Political and Intellection Horizons in UK’s Higher Education Industry; Stephen Baker Chapter 2. Tracing Threads of Precarity: Working-Class Lives, Academic Insecurity and the Labour of Belonging; Vicky Brady Chapter 3. Middle Class Values Trapped in a Working-Class Academic; Kieran McCartney Chapter 4. Belonging and Solidarity in Working Class Research; Sorca Mc Donnell Chapter 5. Not Knowing Our Place: Social Class, Structural Division and Hegemonic Control in Northern Ireland; Aaron Edwards Chapter 6. On Not Getting Found Out: A Fugitive Class Identity in the Cultural Geography of Irish and British Higher Education; Marcus Free Chapter 7. “You Use your Education Against me”: Familial Dislocation as an Effect of a Higher Education; Sheila Gaffney Chapter 8. Clay-Footed and Curious: A Journey of Becoming; Declan Mc Kenna Chapter 9. A Class Negotiation through the Lens of Education: Exploring Social Class and Inequality; Michelle Kinsella Chapter 10. Seen Butt Unseen; Keith Murphy Chapter 11. Double the Diaspora: On Being Second Generation Irish and Working Class; Deirdre O’Neill Chapter 12. Epilogue: The Change-Makers: How Irish Working-Class Academics are Challenging and Disrupting Dominant Discourses in Higher Education; Iona Burnell Reilly

This is a timely and wholly welcome book which comprises a series of unique personal reflections on shared but individually distinctive career journeys made by Irish academics. These often frank and probingly self-reflexive testimonies traverse, challenge and disrupt the class boundaries and prejudices that are still a stubbornly persistent feature of higher education in Britain and Ireland in the 21st century. The book’s greatest strength is in how its contributors’ political, religious and cultural positions inflect and interrogate established assumptions about how class and ethnicity interact within third level institutions and affect the lives of their employees. At a time when universities on both sides of the Irish Sea are arguably no longer paying much more than lip service to the progressive principles of widening participation established half a century ago, the issues raised here have important implications for educational policy and practice more generally.