Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Dr Lo Marshall is an urban studies scholar, whose interdisciplinary research and teaching is oriented around LGBTQ+ lives, communities and spaces. Dr Alexandra Baybutt is a researcher in dance studies, spanning its embodied, somatic and creative practices as well exploring its social and political conditions. Alongside leading individual research projects, these fellowships build on the work of previous members of the IAS’s EDI cluster, and involve cross-disciplinary collaboration and conversation through participation in EDI-focused reading groups. The research projects will result in the creation of a co-authored report drawing on research findings, and co-editing an issue of the IAS journal Think Pieces. 

Both our research projects are preoccupied with conceptualising EDI as processual, and implicit in the everyday encounters with university structures and systems. We are interested in particular practices and forms of encounter with disembodied structures as well as affective interactions that consider how duties of care are distributed and might be distributed differently. Understanding EDI as ongoing ethical processes raises questions and conflicts about how existing policies and protocols are responded to and open to modification when faced with unanticipated events, needs and encounters. These projects seek to explore what practices of care might be when navigating barriers and the residual dualisms of the university. The contribution of these research projects will highlight specific contexts in EDI practice and theory as interconnected with issues of learning and access. 

Image credit: 'Teeth Gritting in Progress', Darren Cullen www.spellingmistakescostlives.com