Lives of Working Class Academics

Iona Burnell Reilly is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Education and Communities at the University of East London. Iona’s teaching background is in Further Education where she taught English (ESOL) and Access to HE courses for 10 years. She completed her doctorate at The University of Sheffield in 2013. Her research interests and published work are in social class and inequality in education, widening participation, equality and inclusion in higher education, and the experiences of working class students in higher education.

This compelling anthology of stories from academics who identify as having a working-class background offers new insights into our understanding of the relationship between academia and class.Offering a substantial contribution to the body of research that uses autoethnography, the volume opens a platform for academic authors to reflect on their own lived experience through critical study of oneself and one’s own socio-cultural context. The book is a useful resource for autoethnographic research and readers who want to understand the lived experiences of becoming a higher education professional; they will see farther and more clearly through the authors’ lenses.Although a working-class heritage under-pins the autoethnography of each of the writers, the intersections of social class with race and gender are also explored, providing in-depth knowledge about personal journeys into academic life.While the legacy of elitism remains in higher education, and with very little history or class culture in the field of higher education to identify with, the volume can, give voice to and authenticate their experiences, and more importantly, challenge the dominant discourses that maintain and perpetuate elitism and exclusion within higher education.The collection provides a solid foundation for students and academics, of important questions being asked about transitioning into academic life.

• Chapter 1. Navigating the Relational Character of Social Class for Capitalism in the Academy; Alpesh Maisuria Chapter 2. Mr. Airport Man & the Albatross: A reverie of flight, hope and transformation; Craig A. Hammond Chapter 3. Power, corruption and lies: fighting the class-war to widen participation in higher education; Colin McCaig Chapter 4. ‘Friends First, Colleagues Second’: A collaborative autoethnographic approach to exploring working-class women’s experiences of the neoliberal academy; Carli Rowell and Hannah WaltersChapter 5. Coming to terms with the academic self: place, pedagogy and teacher education; ML White Chapter 6. The Rubik’s Cube of Identity; Khalil Akbar Chapter 7. Uptown Top Ranking: From a Council Estate to the Academy; Marcia A. Wilson Chapter 8. One’s Place and the Right to Belong; Iona Burnell Reilly Chapter 9. Who do you think you are? The influence of working class experience on an educator in a process of becoming; Peter Shukie Chapter 10. John Constable was my first art teacher: Construction of desire in a working-class artist/academic; Samantha Broadhead Chapter 11. Class is a verb: lived encounters of a minority ethnic academic who self-identifies with aspects of working-class cultures in the UK; Stephen Wong Chapter 12. Reading the posh newspapers; Teresa Crew Chapter 13. Thames Estuary Academic; Jo Finch Concluding chapter: Tackling ‘the taboo’: the personal is political (and it’s scholarly too); Michael Pierse