Thesis title:
LGBT+ Volunteering in Higher Education – Care and Community
Abstract:
In my research, I consider how students and staff engaged in LGBT-related voluntary work at English universities (for instance through student societies or staff networks) see the role of their work in relation to the university as an institution.
Working with a post-structural approach to narrativisation, I have used Thematic Analysis to look at interviews and focus group material from nineteen LGBT+ volunteers at English universities. I have combined this with a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of student experience videos, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion statements.
Drawing on queer disruptions of normative approaches to success and failure, I argue that my interviewees’ experiences of facilitating informal care, hidden pedagogies, and ‘small’ successes, point to an alternative system of value, which is more longitudinal and affective, and less immediate and numerically inclined.
First supervisor:
Melanie Cooke
Pathway:
7 – Linguistics, Media & Culture
Cohort:
2019-20
Publications:
““They always want to argue with you”: Navigating raciolinguistic ideologies at airport security”, in Journal of Sociolinguistics – https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/josl.12621
It’s Just Research Podcast – https://www.kcl.ac.uk/its-just-research-an-ecs-podcast “Lockdown Loneliness and LGBT+ Research”, in Feminist Perspectives – https://www.kcl.ac.uk/lockdown-loneliness-and-lgbt-research
Social media:
Contently: https://pippasterk.contently.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PippaSterk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pippa-sterk-3782a2130/