https://www.workingclassacademics.com/blog daily 0.75 2021-04-25 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/home daily 1.0 2026-04-01 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/our-team daily 0.75 2026-01-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1610659736254-NRVVQHKATQ9DYPFTFJOC/GVB_09a+copy+2.jpg Leadership - Geraldine Van Bueren KC (Chair) British Institute of International and Comparative Law United Kingdom Tobias Keene, D.D.S. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Tobias Keene brings a bit of unabashed Southern hospitality to all his patients. He moved to Washington, D.C. over thirty years ago as a freshman at Ivy College. Right after graduation, he attended World University’s School of Dentistry. Before opening Keene Dental in 1994, he worked for free clinics and some of the finest practices in the District. He is part of the 123 Dental Association and stays up-to-date on the latest dental discoveries. When not striving to keep his patients happy and healthy, he’s enjoys hiking with his family in Rock Creek Park. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1613412186724-NE58JF94OP1VF43B8HQ2/craig.jpg Leadership - 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/c92afa90-91c1-4391-8d0a-2ee380c08760/Screen+Shot+2024-11-06+at+9.18.20+AM.png Leadership Karen Bell (U Glasgow) Karen Bell is Professor of Social and Environmental Justice in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Professor Karen Bell was brought up in a working-class family with some Romany Gypsy heritage. She left school at 15 to work in a range of manual jobs including as a florist, post-woman, factory worker, motor-cycle courier, and cleaner. In her mid-20s, with the support of a UK Government grant, she became the first in her family to go to college and then to polytechnic. After a further stint of manual work, she eventually became a community development worker, working in disadvantaged areas to support local people to identify and address environmental and social issues. In 2002, she took a Masters in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and later studied for a PhD in ‘Environmental Justice’ at the University of Bristol. She has since worked at the University of Bristol, University of Keele, University of the West of England and now the University of Glasgow. After facing classism during her PhD studies and subsequent early career, she began to organise with other working-class academics, setting up the UK Network of Working-Class Academics in 2018. This group merged with the Alliance of Working-Class Academics in 2024. Professor Bell now researches, teaches and publishes on social class and sustainability; the environmental impact of the military; Romany Gypsy sustainability practices; and decolonising ‘Just Transition’ – see www.karenbell.org for a full description of her work. Her research has been funded primarily by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the British Academy (BA). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1613419946659-LU77SM0R6D4I92SPE1OR/Screen+Shot+2021-02-15+at+2.11.59+PM.png Leadership - Dr. Carole Binns [Advisory] Bradford University United Kingdom Tobias Keene, D.D.S. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Tobias Keene brings a bit of unabashed Southern hospitality to all his patients. He moved to Washington, D.C. over thirty years ago as a freshman at Ivy College. Right after graduation, he attended World University’s School of Dentistry. Before opening Keene Dental in 1994, he worked for free clinics and some of the finest practices in the District. He is part of the 123 Dental Association and stays up-to-date on the latest dental discoveries. When not striving to keep his patients happy and healthy, he’s enjoys hiking with his family in Rock Creek Park. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1610659829806-2Q0GUAO49UUX36XLCXUJ/Paul-Craddock-Maastricht-02_2020_9.jpg Leadership - 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/9bf1c13d-4e56-489a-a93d-66de5f0d4c71/Charlie+Davis+1++%281%29.jpg Leadership - 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/4d4a6058-91ae-49f1-a46c-277becf17314/EJG-headshot+2.jpeg Leadership - 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/801041ed-c13c-44c1-b2b4-c402ed2ff167/Prof.+Roberts.jpg Leadership - 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/82feeadf-c65f-4862-9957-dd1a6e869683/johnmckendrick.jpg Leadership - 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 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. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/637807ab-c44e-4edd-857b-b06c4a702050/Statz+Bio+Photo+.jpeg Leadership Michele Statz, PhD Michele Statz, PhD is the Director of Judicial Wellbeing at Berkeley Judicial Institute. She is concurrently an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Affiliated Faculty with the University of Minnesota Law School, and an Affiliated Scholar with the American Bar Foundation. Dr. Statz is trained as an anthropologist of law and is a leading scholar in judicial wellbeing and access to justice. Her research has been generously funded by the National Science Foundation and has been published in Law & Social Inquiry, Law & Society Review, Harvard Law & Policy Review, and the American Journal of Public Health, among others. She is also the author of Lawyering an Uncertain Cause (Vanderbilt 2018) and co-editor of Global Reflections on Positionality in Rural Access to Justice Research (Bloomsbury 2025). Statz is the founder and chair of the Law and Society Association’s Law and Rurality Collaborative Research Network. Statz holds a PhD and MA in Anthropology and a Graduate Certificate in Comparative Law and Society Studies from the University of Washington. She is presently the Leonora Montgomery Scholar of Excellence at Meadville Lombard Theological School. https://www.workingclassacademics.com/resourcecentre daily 0.75 2021-08-08 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/contact daily 0.75 2024-10-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1613413022411-6WHFD40WQMGTRI6EH875/M-social+class+narratives+poster+jan+2021-01.jpg Contact Us - We’d love to hear from you. The Alliance of Working Class Academics is committed to supporting students and colleagues of working class heritage. If you would like to join the Alliance or are looking in particular for mentorship from someone in your discipline, profession, and/or region, please fill out the form below. Our membership is truly international, and we are happy to connect you with the support that is most relevant to you in your studies and career. https://www.workingclassacademics.com/universitycode daily 0.75 2021-10-12 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/support-for-communities daily 0.75 2024-05-11 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/news daily 0.75 2026-04-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/8abaeb9e-d110-4a22-925c-2bfd4f9337d5/Speakers+copy.jpg News and Events - Make it stand out Professor Van Bueren (center) with the other event speakers. The debate was organised by The River Group and held in London on 22nd January. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/4df57668-62fb-4500-ab8c-40a7b41ff829/Screen+Shot+2023-10-24+at+11.07.35+AM.png News and Events - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/87946b0d-7914-4f70-b367-60e4116ef823/Screen+Shot+2022-02-01+at+3.26.00+PM.png News and Events - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1629740674288-IRCF80AXHFDVAF8FSMJF/Screen+Shot+2021-08-23+at+12.40.40+PM.png News and Events - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1620134247818-D2H4P6PS2843FIS0WLNA/Screen+Shot+2021-05-04+at+8.16.45+AM.png News and Events https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1614267604304-E3AHD5G3774NQ488946C/Screen+Shot+2021-02-25+at+9.39.51+AM.png News and Events - Upcoming Conference Session on Class: Identity Politics Needs Some Class The Annual Canadian Sociological Association Conference Congress 2021 of the Humanities and Social Sciences University of Alberta | May 31 – June 4 2021 (Virtual) https://www.csa-scs.ca/conference/en/ https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1613418608153-YT6M88UFA9L6NT6ZJVTO/Screen+Shot+2021-02-15+at+1.49.46+PM.png News and Events - Free Webinar: Working Class Journeys in the Academy February 24, 2021. 7:30 pm London Featuring guest speakers Dr. Nicola Ingram and Dr. Deirdre O’Neill. Email: craig.johnston@winchester.ac.uk for details. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1613419258709-GIIFCNABBG0WI4SRMWDG/Screen+Shot+2021-02-15+at+2.00.46+PM.png News and Events - AWCA Board Member Carole Binns’ work profiled in LSE post, “Is social class relevant in higher education today?” Read more here. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1613419096326-JFTJJD77L97LN2VLQJF0/Screen+Shot+2021-02-15+at+1.57.53+PM.png News and Events - AWCA Board Member publishes in Times Higher Education (Feb. 2021) “How to navigate choppy, elitist waters as a working-class academic” Read more here. https://www.workingclassacademics.com/donate daily 0.75 2021-02-15 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/affiliate-groups daily 0.75 2022-04-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1643311826411-BMZ15OASD1NKL6RE8ZZ6/Screen+Shot+2022-01-27+at+1.30.12+PM.png Affiliate Groups https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1643312041735-9NY8A7697UCC8PPJ0UPZ/Screen+Shot+2022-01-27+at+1.33.49+PM.png Affiliate Groups https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1644778466730-W74KFBPNADXOVE3C0833/Screen+Shot+2022-02-13+at+12.54.18+PM.png Affiliate Groups https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1645710086038-O2QRKUFM5EB9YULXXNDL/Screen+Shot+2022-02-24+at+7.41.17+AM.png Affiliate Groups https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6000abad12727a78e161bc8d/1649273731906-K7OIQK4HPLKAZG2DVI18/Screen+Shot+2022-04-06+at+2.35.21+PM.png Affiliate Groups https://www.workingclassacademics.com/2022conference daily 0.75 2024-02-03 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/2023-conference daily 0.75 2024-02-03 https://www.workingclassacademics.com/2024-conference daily 0.75 2024-05-15