Working-class academics talking: a participatory critical storytelling project with Russell Group academics

In 2021 Dr Charlie Davis won a SRHE Newer Researcher Award and the report of his work entitled Working-class academics talking: a participatory critical storytelling project with Russell Group academics has now been published.

In this SRHE project, Dr Davis worked with a group of Russell Group academics to develop composite stories in interactive comic formats representing their experiences of being and becoming an academic of working-class heritage (AWCH). Mobilising a series of storytelling methods, the participants, shared, unsettled and (re)interpreted their lived experiences to explore the complexities of their roots, and routes into HE. Working with an illustrator, the participants then worked with the narrative data to create three interactive comics representing, roots, and routes into academia; career pathways into and through HE and finding your voice as an AWCH. The comics communicate to people of working-class backgrounds in, or considering transition into HE contexts, that people with similar identity characteristics to them may exist in academia. The project contributes knowledge to creative co-production methodologies challenging forms of epistemic injustice denying working-class people access to potentially transformative HE experiences. At a policy level, this study seeks to contribute to discussions about how to meet challenges which impede access to HE for academics and students identifying as being of working-class heritage.

Read project report