My Brilliant Career? An Investigation

Carruthers Thomas, Kate (2018) My Brilliant Career? An Investigation. [Artefact]

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Abstract

My Brilliant Career is a graphic essay presenting emerging findings from an ongoing research project (Gender(s) At Work). The research investigates the implications of gendered, lived experiences within the higher education working environment for gender-neutral and linear career metaphors. This submission thus experiments with a performative practice – textual and visual distillation - as a means of publishing academic research. It is an approach influenced by the developing practice of graphic social science (Carrigan 2017, Vigurs 2016) as a means to ‘transform attitudes, awareness and behaviour around social issues’ (Priego, 2016). The lengthy creative process also provides an opportunity to intensively reflect on data, meaning and emotion; comics creation as a ‘way of thinking’ (Sousanis 2015).
My Brilliant Career draws on multiple narratives of work and career in a UK university, collected from female and male staff occupying a range of roles and grades within the organisation. The essay selects and restories these accounts, framing them within three archetypal (and architectural) phenomena which frequently characterise academic and popular discussions of career obstacles, risks, constraints and privileges i.e.: the glass ceiling, the glass escalator and the glass cliff (Bruckmüller et al 2014; Williams 2013; Ryan and Haslam 2007; 2005; Budig 2002 inter alia). The essay integrates these distinctive metaphorical structures into an analysis of gender as a ‘geography of power’ operating within the university, positioning members of staff and enabling/constraining the ways in which they position themselves, in relation to career.

Item Type: Artefact
Dates:
DateEvent
June 2018Published
Uncontrolled Keywords: gender; workplace; career; higher education; graphic social science
Subjects: CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-02 - sociology
CAH26 - geography, earth and environmental studies > CAH26-01 - geography, earth and environmental studies > CAH26-01-03 - human geography
CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-01 - education
Divisions: Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences > Dept. Criminology and Sociology
Depositing User: Kate Thomas
Date Deposited: 01 Oct 2018 09:50
Last Modified: 03 Mar 2022 15:55
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/6409

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