PhD Candidate: Lovise Haj Brade

Abstract:
The project departs from a political and theoretical interest in analysing the im/perceptibility of ‘firstness’ (as opposed to otherness) - i.e. the constitutive inside of privilege rather than it’s much discussed outside. Inspired by queer theory and critical whiteness studies my dissertation aim to investigate how (middle)classness is (re)produced and enacted within Swedish academia. The empirical material entails interviews with and fieldwork among university researchers and teachers from ‘homes with a study habit’, photos of the spatial surroundings in which ‘academicness’ is enacted, universities policies on Broadened recruitment of students as well as documentation of the recent student-/teacher movement to resist the proposed reform of Swedish universities into economic foundations. Drawing from this variety of sources the project seeks to suggest ways to conceptualise how human as well as non-human actors and spatiality collaborate and diverge in enabling (middle)classed subjectification in an increasingly neoliberal academia.

Source of funding: Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University

Participating colleagues: Supervisors: Kerstin Sandell and Dorte Marie Søndergaard (DPU)

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