Geraldine Van Bueren QC (Chair)
British Institute of International and Comparative Law
United Kingdom
Professor Emerita Geraldine Van Bueren QC is an Hon. Senior Fellow at BIICL and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. She is a barrister and member of Doughty Street Chambers and was appointed an honorary Queen’s Counsel in recognition of her scholastic contributions to national and international law. At the time of her appointment there were fewer than ten women honorary silks. Professor Van Bueren is also a Bencher in the Middle Temple.
Professor Geraldine Van Bueren QC held the first Chair of International Human Rights Law at Queen Mary University of London, which awarded her the title of Professor Emerita.
She has served as a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission with lead responsibility for human rights and on the Attorney-General’s International Pro Bono Committee.
Professor Van Bueren is Chair of the Association of Working Class Academics, edited Law’s Duty to the Poor for UNESCO and is one of a group of academics who together with non-governmental organisations are drafting an Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Act for the United Kingdom.
Professor Van Bueren QC’s writings have been cited in courts around the world, including the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the European Court of Human Rights and also in legislatures including the US Senate and the Australian Parliament.
She founded the Human Rights Collegium at Queen Mary University of London and served as its director.
Professor Van Bueren has been interviewed by Angelina Jolie in Time magazine and her profile in the Guardian went viral. She is currently writing a monograph, Class and Law (Hart).
She delivered the 2020 Annual Harry Weinrebe Lecture on Inclusivity and the Law, “Should the Law Prohibit Class Discrimination?”
https://www.youtube.com/embed/V7iTQjgGJwE
In 2003, Professor Van Bueren was awarded the Child Rights Lawyer Award. The Award, jointly organised by the Law Society, UNICEF and The Lawyer, recognises lawyers who have done outstanding work in the field of children’s rights.
Professor Van Bueren is one of the original drafters of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and also helped draft the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, the UNHCR Guidelines on Refugee Children and the United Nations Programme of Action on Children in the Criminal Justice System.
She has represented the United Nations in discussions with Iran; the Commonwealth Secretariat in Bangladesh and advised the Government of Japan and Unicef. She has also acted as an expert witness for the Government of Canada and has lectured and worked throughout Europe and the United States and in Argentina, Senegal, Uganda and Venezuela. From 2002 to 2006 Professor Van Bueren held a second concurrent chair the W P Schreiner Professor, Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Cape Town.
Professor Van Bueren co-founded INTERIGHTS, represented Amnesty International for ten years at the UN on children’s rights and is a member of the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Children’s Rights Project), Child Rights International and is on the Advisory Board of Rene Cassin. She has also served as a non-executive director and Trustee of Save the Children.
Craig Johnston, PhD (Vice Chair)
University of the West of England
United Kingdom
Dr Craig Johnston (Vice Chair) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England.
Craig is a sociologist/criminologist working in the area of Youth, social justice and exclusion but is also interested in broader issues of the relationship between the self and society, the affective and the material. His priority has been to engage in research with a strong social justice agenda that addresses social inequalities of all kinds. His most recent research interests lie in policy initiatives that affect young people on the margins of communities, social exclusion (particularly from education services) and youth culture. This has resulted in researching areas as diverse as disabled ‘bad boys’ underachievement, higher education access, volunteering in disadvantaged communities, and professionalism in statutory settings. Having been asked to leave school at 15, Craig went on to play professional football before working in a variety of national and international settings, including Adolescent Psychology, Further Education, Children’s Safeguarding and Youth Work/Justice. Since gaining his PhD, Craig has held MA and BA teaching commitments at Brunel, Coventry and Winchester Universities on Education, Youth Work, Social Work, Criminology, Childhood and Social Science and Human Geography programmes.
Dr. Carole Binns [Advisory]
Bradford University
United Kingdom
Dr Carole Binns is a Lecturer and Director of a social science undergraduate studies at Bradford University. In 2020 she was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's award for Excellence in recognition of highly inclusive approaches to learning and teaching, particularly regarding first generation students from working-class backgrounds.
“I was born in the East End of London in the early 1960’s. Aged 16 I went straight into work and loved it. Despite changing jobs every three years or so, I did well and was often promoted, but would eventually get bored because I couldn’t go any further with the few qualifications that I had. Years later I decided to do an undergraduate degree as a mature student. I graduated and went on to do a Master’s programme at a highly regarded institution, where I was introduced to various issues around poverty, social exclusion, and social class. Those years were influential, despite often struggling with the way that I spoke and noticeably possessing few cultural assets. Later, I re-entered academia as a casual hourly-paid lecturer and for the first time in my working life, I ‘stayed put’ and didn’t move on. Over the years I became tenured and gained my Doctorate. As a result, I have experienced upward social mobility in terms of my education and career. However, and in my case, I don’t necessarily feel that as a person I have changed very much and will always see myself as working-class”.
Dr. Paul Craddock
University College London
United Kingdom
Paul Craddock is a cultural historian of medicine, his main area of expertise being the cultural history of transplant surgery. Spare Parts (Fig Tree/Penguin, 2020) explores transplant surgery from the sixteenth century to the present day, and will be his first book. As a writer, he is represented by Jenny Hewson at Lutyens and Rubenstein Literary Agency.
Paul is also currently Research Film Maker on the V&A Research Institute’s Encounters on the Shop Floor project led by Dr Marta Ajmar. Encounters highlights the role of embodied knowledge in medical and creative craft, industry, and education. He is also working with Dr Anna Harris at the University of Maastricht with whom he recently published his first peer-reviewed video article, an experiment in the video article form. Increasingly, he is using film as part of a research method to investigate embodied contributions to the history of science and medicine.
As a film maker for research and cultural institutions, Paul is currently working with Imperial College, London, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. His earlier film work has been featured in Nature, the Frankfurt Book Fair, and MoMA.
Paul holds an honorary appointment as Senior Research Associate in the Division of Surgery and Interventional Sciences at University College London. He is a founding member of the Association of Working Class Academics.
Dr. Charlie Davis
University of Nottingham
United Kingdom
Dr Charlie Davis has been working in Higher Education since 2009. He currently works at the University of Nottingham as an Assistant Professor in Higher Education. From 2009 until 2015, Charlie worked as a learning technologist at the University of Derby, exploring the potential of technology to support learning, teaching, assessment and research practices across a range of disciplines. From 2015-2019, Charlie worked at Nottingham Trent University as a Senior Digital Practice Adviser and Academic Developer. In both roles, he contributed to the development of the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP), leading the Educational Inquiry module between 2016 and 2019. Prior to working in Higher Education, Charlie spent eight years Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in the Republic of Ireland, Barcelona and England.
Charlie’s research interests are primarily concerned with developing socially just pedagogies aimed at providing under-represented groups opportunities to create knowledge about their lived experiences on their terms. Through this work, Charlie explores how (counter) storytelling can be utilised to create inquiry spaces where participants can creatively resist the silencing presence of dominant narratives which represent their lived experiences in ways they do not recognise or agree with. Charlie is currently working on a participatory project seeking to provide academics, identifying as being of “working class heritage” (Binns, 2019), with opportunities to disrupt, interrogate and (re)interpret their life histories through Arts-based storytelling approaches. The study seeks explore the pedagogic potential of such collective approaches to provide participants with opportunities to create stories of hopeful resistance which represent the intersectional complexities of becoming an academic who identifies as being of working-class heritage. These stories will be shared using a range of multimodal approaches to provide people who identify in similar ways in an effort to facilitate a sense of belonging
Charlie is a reviewer for the journal Pedagogy, Culture and Society. His most recent co-authored paper is DAVIS, C. and PARMENTER, L., 2020. Student-staff partnerships at work: epistemic confidence, research-engaged teaching and vocational learning in the transition to higher education, Educational Action Research.
Sarwan Singh
Senior Lecturer
City Law School
United Kingdom
Sarwan Singh was educated at his local comprehensive and was the first and only child of seven siblings to enter further education. His mother was illiterate. Sarwan studied law at Warwick Uni and UCL, then qualified as a Barrister. He spent his early years working in law centres and then joined local government and was employed by a London local authority. He obtained an MBA from South Bank Uni. He joined the education sector 20 years ago and is presently Senior Lecturer at City Law School and Assistant Dean for EDI. He was pro bono Director at City for 10 years, sat as part time Chair of Employment Tribunal, and was President of City UCU for 3 years.
Michele Statz, PhD
University of Minnesota
United States
Michele Statz is an anthropologist of law. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth and an affiliate faculty with the University of Minnesota Law School.
Michele’s current research examines how socio-spatial dimensions of rurality influence legal advocacy, rights mobilization, and the work of tribal and state court judges in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. This project stretches the usual bounds of analysis by underscoring rural individuals’ own expertise and experiences of the “rural lawscape.” It likewise identifies necessary opportunities for these perspectives to inform and innovate policy, practice, and applied research methodologies. This research has been published in Harvard Law and Policy Review, Law & Society Review, American Journal of Public Health, and Health and Place.
Michele's other work includes collaborative and interdisciplinary projects on reproductive justice, immigration policy, and global youth, and she also co-founded and co-curates Youth Circulations, an online platform for art, activism, and scholarship on mobility and the politics of representation.
Her new book, Lawyering an Uncertain Cause: Immigration Advocacy and Chinese Youth in the U.S. explores constructions of age and vulnerability in legal advocacy on behalf of young Chinese migrants. It has been reviewed as “a humanistic, wonderfully written, engaging, and terribly important work of scholarship in a crucial area of research."
Michele has a PhD in sociocultural anthropology and comparative law and society studies from the University of Washington. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota with her family.
Steven Roberts
Professor
Monash University
Australia
Steven Roberts is a sociologist and Professor of Education and Social Justice in the School of Education, Culture and Society, Monash University, Australia. He grew up in a working class mining community in the south of England, an union-movement and Labour inspired enclave in an otherwise sea of Conservative heartland. In 2003 aged 25, he was first in his family to go to university, attending the University of Kent to undertake a joint degree in Industrial Relations and Social Policy. He continued at Kent thanks to ESRC funding through his MA in Research Methods and through to the completion of his PhD in Social Policy in 2010. He then took on permanent academic roles at the University of Southampton, and then back at the University of Kent for two years, before heading to the School of Social Sciences at Monash in 2015.
Steve's primary research interests revolve around social class, youth, masculinity and social change. Within these parameters he has published widely on topics such as men’s engagement with risky drinking; sexting; emotionality; computer gaming; violence; domestic labour; education; and employment. He has published four books, five edited books and well over 50 book chapters and journal articles, including in British Journal of Sociology, Sociology, The Sociological Review, New Media And Society. His books include 'Young Working Class Men in Transition' (2018, Routledge), and 'Rethinking Masculinities at the Margins' (with Karla Elliott, forthcoming, Bristol University Press). His research has been funded by the ESRC, the Australian Research Council, Vic Health, and the Australian Government, among others.
Mary J. Owen, MD, Tlingit
Associate Dean of Native American HealthDirector, Center of American Indian and Minority HealthUniversity of Minnesota Medical School, U.S.Dr. Mary Owen is a member of the Auk Kwaan Tribe of the Tlingit people. She is an Associate Dean of Native American Health and the Director of the Center of American Indian and Minority Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She was raised in Juneau, Alaska and has been involved in Native health since the age of three when she received her health care from the Indian Health Service. She attended medical school to serve her tribal community which she did for eleven years before returning to academia where she recruits and supports Native American students to become healthcare providers and where she teaches on caring for Native patients and communities. She continues to provide clinical care at the Center of American Indian Resources in Duluth and is the immediate past-president of the Association of American Indian Physicians. 
Professor John Holland McKendrick
John's primary research interests are on poverty (with a particular interest in children) and children’s play and has published for academics and practitioners. He is particularly keen that his work is of use to practitioners and campaigners beyond the academy who seek to tackle poverty in Scotland, the UK and the EU. Last year he co-edited Poverty in Scotland 2016 (CPAG, 2016) and this year published several works on GCU’s Caledonian Club. Together with Professor Stephen Sinclair, he co-directs the Scottish Poverty and Inequality Research Unit (SPIRU). John writes a research column for the Scottish Anti Poverty Review and has been on Play Scotland’s Board of Directors since 1997.e it stand out
Professor Emma-Jaye Gavin
Professor of Indigenous Truth-telling Research
National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice.
Dr. Emma-Jaye Gavin is a Garrwa Aboriginal woman from Northern Territory, Australia. She is a Professor of Indigenous Truth-telling Research with the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice.
Dr. Gavin is the first person in her family to complete a university degree. She then went on to complete a Master’s degree in Political Science and International Relations, followed by a PhD in Indigenous Knowledges. Dr. Gavin began her academic career at Swinburne University of Technology, as a Lecturer in Indigenous Studies. Dr. Gavin was then internally promoted to Senior Lecturer and Academic Director of Indigenous Teaching and Learning. Dr. Gavin then took up an Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Indigenous Advancement) position at Monash University. In early 2024 Dr. Gavin took up a position with the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice, as a Professor of Indigenous Truth-telling Research.
Dr. Gavin’s research area is primarily with Indigenous communities and Indigenous knowledges. Her research is creative, and community based, and often conducted and published through film and media mediums. From 2024, Dr. Gavin’s research focus is on truth and treaty work, with First Nations communities across Australia and globally.
Dr. Emma Penney
Dr. Emma Penney is a Lecturer in Writing & Literature at Atlantic Technological University in Co. Sligo, Ireland. In 2020, she completed a PhD in English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. She is a former Steering Committee member for the Working-Class Studies Association and former Chair of their Working-Class Academics Section.
Emma’s research interests are vast. Before taking up her current position she completed a year-long fellowship as a Fulbright Scholar at Howard University in Washington DC where she worked as an arts advisor on the pilot project of the CDC’s newly established Office of Minority Health and Health Equity. More recently Emma took a position as a Decolonial Specialist on Ireland’s N-TUTORR project which seeks to develop the capabilities of all staff to address a sustainable pedagogical and learning environment with particular and critical focus on digital transformation, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Decolonial practice is also core to Emma’s teaching and she has a particular interest in Ireland’s position as a majority white postcolonial state, its history of racism and anti-racism, Ireland’s participation in empire and in the colonialisation and plantation of the United States and Canada in particular.
In 2021 Emma organised Ireland’s first working-class studies conference at Liberty Hall where she also launched the Working-Class Writing Archive – a collection of previously unpublished or self-published writing from working-class communities. Emma now uses this archive in teaching on the BA (hons) in Writing & Literature at ATU Sligo.
Emma is a welfare-class academic and her first published work with colleague, Dr Laura Lovejoy, was titled ‘Navigating Academia in the Welfare-Class’. In this article Emma and Laura reclaim the term ‘welfare-class’ and document some of the specific experiences of alienation which pertain to being welfare-class in academia by focusing on the lived experiences of the authors. Since then, Emma has maintained a keen interest in the power of story-telling and autoethnography to give a voice to experiences often outlawed.