Category: academic publications

  • Young people on the margins

    Young people on the margins

    Today Routledge published Young People on the Margins, my edited collection with Loic Menzies. It’s been four years in the making, and represents The CfEY’s manifesto for action in youth and education. The book features chapters from the whole CfEY team, setting out how key groups of young people are marginalised by the system and…

  • White working class boys in the neoliberal meritocracy

    White working class boys in the neoliberal meritocracy

    I’ve just had a book chapter published as part of a collection on Masculinity and Aspiration in the Era of Neoliberal Education, edited by Garth Stahl, Joseph Nelson and Derron Wallace. The chapter is about white working class boys in the neoliberal meritocracy, and the pitfalls of the ‘aspiration-raising’ agenda. It’s available here on Google…

  • How “space” and “place” contribute to occupational aspirations as a value-constituting practice for working-class males

    How “space” and “place” contribute to occupational aspirations as a value-constituting practice for working-class males

    The March 2016 special issue of Education + Training, focusing on gendered spaces and subjectivities, carried a paper I co-authored with Garth Stahl. In the paper we look at how “space” and “place” contribute to occupational aspirations as a value-constituting practice for working-class males, drawing on fieldwork I conducted in South Manchester for my PhD. The purpose of the paper is…

  • Aspirations, education and social justice: applying Sen and Bourdieu – book review

    Aspirations, education and social justice: applying Sen and Bourdieu – book review

    The August 2015 issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies carries a book review of Caroline Sarojini Hart’s Aspirations, education and social justice: applying Sen and Bourdieu that I wrote with Loic Menzies at LKMco. In our review we reflect on how Sarojini Hart’s combination of theoretical and empirical work encourages us to unpack the notion of ‘aspirations’ that increasingly…

  • The retreat of the state and the future of social science

    The retreat of the state and the future of social science

    In a paper published today in Management in Education, as part of a special issue on embedded research, I argue that the government’s cuts to the social sciences within higher education, alongside those being made to local authority budgets in some of the most deprived areas of the country, present researchers with an imperative to…