Online Workshop: (In)visibility and Social Inequality in Academia and Higher Education

Organization: Marco Valero Sanchez and Stephanie Beyer

An undertaking of sociology is to make the invisible visible and hence to analyse and understand social inequalities. Our workshop aims to broach this issue within the sphere of the university itself. For instance, we find that reputation as core criterion in academia – may it be in form of publications, citations, rankings, or research funds – plays a significant role in making institutions, their scholars, and their specific knowledge visible. However, reputation is a socially constructed phenomenon that is also connected to mechanisms of power that are usually invisible. Furthermore, the university is a specific and reflexive social space where potentially invisible social inequalities are made explicit, especially by the social sciences. Nonetheless, the university still contributes to not providing equal opportunities for all societal groups and therefore (re)produces social inequalities to a certain degree.

In our workshop, we would like to focus on the social construction and negotiation of (in)visibility of categories such as social class, gender, race, disability, health, and chronic illness. How and under which circumstances do these categories become (in)visible and for whom? Additionally, we would like to discuss the role of visibility and invisibility in academia and higher education, how this is translated into social inequalities (or vice versa), and how we can analyse these processes and/or tackle them conceptually. Furthermore, we would like to pay attention to the physical and psychological well-being of students, faculty, and staff and discuss whether and how differences in health status promote social inequalities in academia and higher education.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 18. April 2021

Deadline for registration: 01. June 2021

Workshop Program