The workshop draws on research conducted on the topic since 2010 with students, academics, professional staff, leadership and management staff and, more recently, ancillary staff, with a range of responsibilities (e.g. Moreau, 2016; Moreau and Wheeler, 2022). Over the years, the research has been informed by theoretical principles borrowed primarily from critical theory and poststructuralism (Fraser, 2000; Lynch et al, 2009). Data were collected through a range of means, including policy analysis, literature reviews, interviews, focus groups and surveys.

Drawing on this body of work, I reflect on how we can focus on the institutional level to generate social change through a policy intervention which supports the development of ‘care-full’ academic cultures (Moreau, 2016), ie cultures which are inclusive of carers. In particular, I advocate that, to make universities more care-full, institutional plans need to adopt an approach which is research-informed, multi-level, structural and collective and differentiated (ie which considers the diversities and intersectionalities of care; Moreau and Robertson, 2019). During the workshop, participants will be encouraged to reflect on what form this intervention may take in their institution, with the discussion supported by the sharing of various academic, policy and artistic resources which have been developed by the workshop facilitator in collaboration with others.

Marie-Pierre Moreau is Professor in Sociology of Education, Work and Inequalities at Anglia Ruskin University, UK, where she is also the founding director of the Centre for Education Research on Identities and Inequalities (CERII). A sociologist by training, her research is located at the nexus of education, work and inequalities. Her current research concentrates on two key areas: teachers’ identities and careers, with specific reference to gender and the ‘feminisation thesis’, and the relationship between care and academic work, with specific reference to the way students and academic staff with caring responsibilities are positioned in academic discourses. She is the editor of the Bloomsbury Gender and Education book series (with P. J. Burke and N. Niemi) and of the journal Access: Critical Explorations of Equity in Higher Education (also with P. J. Burke).

References:

Fraser, N. (2000). Rethinking Recognition. New Left Review, 3: 107-120

Lynch, K., Baker, J. & Lyons, M. (Eds.) (2009) Affective equality: Love, care, and injustice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Moreau, M.P. (2016) Regulating the student body/ies: University policies and student parents, British Educational Research Journal, 42(5): 906-925.

Moreau, M.P. & Robertson, M. (2019) ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’? Support to academics who are carers in higher education, Social Sciences [Special Issue: Family and Work: Parental Leave and Careers], available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/6/164.

Moreau, M.P. & Wheeler, L. (2022) Towards the ‘care-full’ university: Caregivers in pandemic times at ARU. Cambridge: Anglia Ruskin University.

Resources:

https://theresearchwitch.wordpress.com/the-care-full-university/

This workshop begins with an overview of arts-based and comics-based ethnographic research. This lecture seeks to provide nourishment in the context of our contemporary ontological emergency by offering comics as method. Specifically, we will explore the unique possibilities—and areas for care and concern—associated with the use of comics-based research (CBR) methods in ethnographic contexts, which have their own unique methodological concerns as well as histories around the use of comics as texts. Beginning with a thorough overview of CBR methods, this introduction  will specifically describe how CBR may be used for data analysis as well as dissemination of study findings, while also teasing apart how CBR differs from and overlaps with other visual arts-based research methods.

Following the introduction, participants will be invited to make their own zines. Participants should bring with them any chunks of powerful, juicy data as well as any artifacts or important visual representations from their fieldwork (or elsewhere) that they would feel comfortable using for collage purposes (meaning: if you do not want to cut it up please make a copy). Together we will identify, transform and open up important moments from our research into tiny jewel-box illustrated stories—from which we will make zines--to analyze and share resonant meaning in our work. Participants will complete one zine of their own for distribution, trading or library-building, or as an analytic tool for future writing.

Sally Pirie is Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of Massachusetts @Amherst College of Education. An award-winning newspaper cartoonist and anthropologist of childhood and schooling, she received her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder and is a graduate of Punahou School and Grinnell College. Her areas of expertise include comics-based research methods, book arts methods, and art pedagogy in childhood. She served two terms as Editor in Chief of Anthropology and Education Quarterly, was an editor at Jeunessse, and is currently a member of the editorial collective of Pedagogy, Culture and Society, where she is always trying to figure out ways to make more room for comics-based scholarship. She was the 2020 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Morris and the 2021 recipient of the Grinnell College Alumni Award in recognition of her lifetime of public service. A member of the National Book Artists Association, Dr. Pirie is the author of the groundbreaking comic research methods comic series, Shane, under a previous surname. She is Director of the Comics-Based Research Lab at the University of Massachusetts. You can learn about all of that and more at www.sallypirie.com

Looking after a child. Caring for a sick relative. What does it mean to have caring responsibilities while studying or working at a university? A unique research and art-based initiative focuses on the challenges and stories of higher education stafffaculty and students with caring responsibilities. Using Through comics and drawings, the vernissage highlights the obstacles faced by carers in the academic world. Meet the artist and the scientist researcher behind the initiative and engage in discussions about necessary changes in academic culture.

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