Living Parallel Lives

Contributing to a wider body of literature which understands the perspectives and experiences of working-class academics and working-class students, Living Parallel Lives is the first of its kind to understand the position of professional services and administrative staff and their class-based experiences of higher education in the UK.

Providing a novel approach to studies of social class in higher education and representing the voices of a group of stakeholders underrepresented within academic research, Pilgrim-Brown’s study contributes to the inclusion and widening participation agenda by illuminating part of the forgotten landscape of UK higher education. Informed by interviews with professional services and administrative staff, this research contributes a much-needed understanding of how university culture is seen, performed and experienced by those working within the institution. The author shows how recommendations can be made to improve the inclusivity and equitable participation of higher education organisations. The chapters not only scope the experiences and notion of being a working-class professional services worker in UK universities, but the book also makes robust policy recommendations at a local and national level, in order to overhaul the organisational cultural landscape of UK higher education.

A timely and needed lens into the dynamics of cultural capital within the realm of professional service work in UK higher education, this is ground-breaking reading for sociologists of education, higher education professionals and management scholars interested in professional people in a new context.