Professor Deborah Youdell - Inaugural Professorial Lecture

Inequality and the politics of schooling: subjects, knowledges, bodies, feelings

Please register for this event using our online registration form.

This lecture will consider the enduring nature of inequalities in education and the politics of interrupting these inequalities. Cutting across concerns with students’ and teachers’ identifications; policy, school and other knowledges; the materiality of schooling; and the affectivities of school encounters, the lecture will consider the enduring importance of a range of political orientations and theoretical framings. It will argue that commitments to race, gender, sexuality and class politics remain essential, even as these are reorientated through Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality. It will consider recent turns to post-representational thinking in relation to education politics. And it will conclude by arguing that, in a time of unprecedented withdrawal of the state from welfare services, it is essential to understand education and education politics in a bigger public service assemblage.

Deborah Youdell is Professor of Sociology of Education in the School of Education and the Director of the Public Service Academy. Deborah's work in the Sociology of Education is concerned with the relationship between policy, practice and inequalities. Her work explores how inequalities are connected to subjectivities, everyday practices, pedagogy, institutional processes and policy. Her research spans issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, social class, ability and disability. A central concern of her work is how educators can practice politically to intervene in inequalities.

Deborah's work is underpinned by engagements with post-structural thinking about power, the subject, space, and the political. Key theorists include Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, as well as the work of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Her research expertise is in ethnography and action research.

We look forward to seeing you at Professor Youdell’s Inaugural Lecture. All are welcome to this event, but as places are limited you are advised to book early.

Please register for this event using our online registration form.