(dis-)Belonging bodies: negotiating outsider-ness at academic conferences

Abstract

Historically, universities have centred around white-ness and masculinity, meaning that people who do not belong to these groups navigate academic spaces as ‘outsiders’. We position the conference as an important site for understanding the implications of outsider-ness, and the impact of this on early career academics and on the reproduction of exclusionary practices. The conference demands different performances and disciplining of bodies to adhere to academic norms. Conducting interviews with academics within the disciplines of Geography and Politics, this article explores how bodies of white-ness and masculinity are both expected and accepted within an academic setting, whilst for people who are ‘outsiders’, particular along lines of race, gender, and for ECAs, conferences are more difficult to navigate, across ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ spaces. This article concludes by thinking about how conferences can reaffirm or resist the exlcusionary, precarious and uncertain future of the university.

Keywords:

• Academic conferences
• (dis-)belonging
• early career academics
• gender
• race

Notes

Acknowledgements

With thanks to all of our research participants, and to Dr. Jon Oldfield for supervising this project. Thank you to Dr. Megan Daigle, Dr. Phil Emmerson, Dr. Pat Noxolo, Professor Dominique Moran and Professor Peter Kraftl for their careful readings and helpful insights on earlier drafts of this article. As always, thank you to our supervisors, Dr. Pat Noxolo and Dr. Nicola Smith, for their continued support and enthusiasm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Participants were: Professor Ben: British, white, male, 40’s; lecturer Natasha: white, female, 30’s; two teaching fellow ECAs: Anita: Malaysian female, 30’s; Jake: British, white, male, 20’s; and 7 PhD students, James: British, white, male, 20’s; Jane: Chilean, female, 20’s; Sandra: GTA, black British woman, 30’s; John: British, white, male, 20’s; Katherine: British, white, female, 20’s; Lucy: Irish, white, female, 20’s; Laura: British, white, female, 20’s. All names have been changed.

Additional information

Notes on contributor

Catherine is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. Her PhD research traces the historical and contemporary animal rights and vegan movement, to imagine and enact ways in which humans, animals and the earth can co-exist less violently.

Amelia is a UK-based scholar with research interests that cut across political science, political economy, gender, sociology and human geography, focusing on the politics of the body, feminist theory and austerity.