Table Of ContentStrategies for Supporting
Inclusion and Diversity
in the Academy
Higher Education, Aspiration and Inequality
Edited by Gail Crimmins
Strategies for Supporting Inclusion and Diversity
in the Academy
“This book brings together a comprehensive and diverse range of perspectives
and experiences of strategies and approaches that will be of value to anyone who
works in delivery, leadership or support of diversity and inclusion in higher
education. Its authentic voice, combined with a rich range of methodologies and
personal insights helps the authors to bring complex concepts to life in a manner
which is honest, thoughtful and challenging.”
—Professor Sarah Sharples, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Equality, Diversity and
Inclusion, University of Nottingham, UK
“This scholarly book provides a unique and coherent collection of ideas from
international researchers and practitioners. It promotes innovative research and
practice and is outstanding in its conceptual appreciation of diversity. It draws
together strategies to support the inclusion of a diverse range of students—racial,
gendered, social class/socioeconomic status, and dis/ability, and some with com-
plex backgrounds often rarely considered in equity policy in higher education.
In short this is an outstanding book with international appeal and the mes-
sages and practices contained in this book need to be heard by all in education
and in society in general! Every policy maker in education needs to read
this book!”
—Dr Gavin Reid, Psychologist and Author. Visiting Professor,
University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada
“This volume goes a long way to extend the conversation about equity, diversity
and inclusion in our higher education institutions. It provides a contemporary
take on lowering institutional barriers, providing meaningful and effective sup-
port, and takes an unequivocal, learner-centred stance to teaching and the design
of the curriculum to ensure the success of individuals and equity groups. More
importantly, it normalises and celebrates those students as critical to the success
of the higher education enterprise. It is an excellent book and should be required
reading for all leaders and teachers in higher education.”
—Professor Kylie Readman, Pro Vice Chancellor
for Education, Murdoch University, Australia
“‘Crimmins’ excellent collection is a treasure trove of irrefutable statistical facts
and figures that blows away the myth that diversity and inclusion policies have
closed the equalities gap in higher education. Powerful fuel for policy makers and
social justice educators passionate about creating a truly global academy where all
can flourish regardless of race, gender, class, sexuality, and (dis)ability.”
—Heidi Safia Mirza, Professor Race, Faith and Culture,
Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
“The chapters in this edited collection offer a refreshingly insightful and close
analysis of social and academic exclusion within higher education. Together, the
chapters demonstrate attentiveness to the intricate workings of structural and
cultural modes of exclusion and how these produce interrelated inequalities of
access, participation and outcome for students and staff. The book then har-
nesses these insights to develop a range of practical and pragmatic suggestions
for combating exclusion. This engaged commitment to action makes this book
particularly valuable for a wide range of university staff, including faculty, man-
agement and student support.”
—Carol A. Taylor, Professor of Higher Education and
Gender, Director of Research, University of Bath, UK
“‘Gail Crimmvins’ Strategies for Supporting Inclusion and Diversity in the Academy
is a thoughtful and inclusive inquiry into how leaders can maximize the human
potential in their institutions. This volume interrogates exclusionary practices
that limits access along the axes of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, abil-
ity status, and social class. In these 19 chapters, leading scholars bring forth
inclusive actions and practices that will be of immense value to scholars and
practitioners working towards an inclusive and equitable environment for all
those within higher education—a goal all leaders in all institutions should
strive for.”
—Richard J. Reddick, Associate Dean for Equity, Community
Engagement, and Outreach, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
“This edited collection confronts persistent and intersecting inequalities in
higher education internationally and the implications for the lives of students
and staff in Universities. This book illuminates the challenges faced by margin-
alised groups in different socio-cultural and higher educational contexts and
highlights the important of statistical evidence for demonstrating that equality,
diversity and inclusion is a rhetoric rather than a reality. The book addresses a
gap in the literature by focusing on innovative practices and initiatives deployed
by organisations and aiming to challenge and eradicate entrenched inequalities
of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality and disability. In addition to breaking the
myth of equality in higher education the initiatives presented by the authors
disrupt arguments about the impossibility of equality within neo-liberal con-
texts of higher education and offers possibilities and ideas for change, action and
resistance.
—Maria Tsouroufli, Professor of Education, Brunel University London, UK
Gail Crimmins
Editor
Strategies
for Supporting
Inclusion and
Diversity in the
Academy
Higher Education, Aspiration
and Inequality
Editor
Gail Crimmins
School of Creative Industries
University of the Sunshine Coast
Maroochydore, QLD, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-43592-9 ISBN 978-3-030-43593-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43593-6
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To Dave, Eadie and Will
And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any
version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you (Kiersten White 2013).
I’d choose you again and again.
Foreword
It has been my pleasure to read Strategies for Supporting Inclusion and
Diversity in the Academy. The research and researchers are outstanding.
The editor has—with great skill—crafted a theorization of diversity that
is engaging, passionate, provocative, timely and rigorous.
The time is right for such a book. It is clear that higher education requires
revisioning. The university is an institution searching for a purpose.
Through much of its history, universities have maintained the power of the
powerful. Assuming that strategies for social mobility or widening partici-
pation—that is ‘access’—will transform the deep injustices in selection pro-
cesses or the diversity of graduates is not only naïve, but a denial of the
profound legacies of colonialism, misogyny, heterosexism and elitism.
Each chapter in this edited collection summons the most innovative
scholarship and evidence and offers profound visions and opportunities
for universities and higher education. I am inspired by the powerful
attention to women, disabling structures, and trans students and staff.
This is an inspiring book that offers agile and dynamic strategies for the
future of higher education.
Department of Cultural Studies Tara Brabazon
Flinders University
Bedford Park
SA, Australia
vii
Inclusion is not simply about physical proximity. It is about intentionally
planning for the success of all students.
—Tim Villegas
Preface
This edited collection of chapters establishes the importance of using statistical
evidence to demonstrate and remonstrate against inequities in higher education
(HE). In an age of ‘numeric nihilism’ statistics provide information about who is,
and who is not, included in various levels of academia, and presents evidence of
inequity in HE based along lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, social class or
socioeconomic status, and differing ability. Statistics that reflect widespread, lon-
gitudinal and inter/national inequity act as a foundation to the main focus of the
book—an examination of tried and tested strategy and interventions that sup-
port the full inclusion of a diversity of knowledge, students and faculty in the
academy. The volume captures specific examples of inclusive practice/s that are as
diverse as our (potential) student and faculty populations, and that are easy to
translate and employ by senior administrators, academics, and learning access/
student support staff. The practices presented in the collection thus can be
deployed by organisations, collectives, and individuals to both recognise and
combat social and academic exclusion within higher education environments.
Whilst most publications that explore academic inequality focus on
the causes and impacts of structural, psychological and cultural exclusion
based on racism, classism, sexism, and ableism, they rarely engage inter-
ventions to expose and combat such de/privilege. This book offers higher
education senior staff, policy makers, recruitment and student support
teams, as well as academics the tools to identify and subvert both explicit
and tacit exclusionary policy and practice. Through curating and collat-
ing the chapters in this volume, and by harnessing the expertise of equity
xi
xii Preface
practitioners and academics who work towards social, racial, gender and
dis/ability e/quality, I hope to motivate direct action against social and
academic exclusion in the academy.
The collection is comprised of four main sections (excluding this introduction,
a framing chapter—Chap. 1, and conclusion—Chap. 19). These include:
Part II: Supporting Racial Diversity in the Academy. This section starts
with an introduction to and overview of policy and practice relating to
the promotion of race equality ethnic diversity in the Academy over two
decades in the UK. Professor Andrew Pilkington offers an account of
policy intent, action, and diversion in a repetitious pattern. He also iden-
tifies some clear strategy for breaking this self-repeating cycle by focusing
on accountability and outcomes in race equity in higher education. In
Chap. 3 Rebecca Gordon and Lakshmi S. Bose expose the limitations of
existing doctoral training programs and their opportunity to create epis-
temological pluralism. The doctoral program is thus presented as a mech-
anism to include a diversity of knowledges, ways of knowing, and knowers
in the academy that has the capacity to inform all future curricula. In
Chap. 4, Associate Professor Sandy O’Sullivan discusses the radical re-
thinking (and tearing down of existing structure) required to the support
of First Nations’ diversity in the modern university; including sensitising
the readers to the compounding impacts of gender non-conformity and
Indigeneity upon inclusion in HE. Dr Aura Lounasmaa, in Chap. 5,
explores institution-wide process and curriculum patterning designed to
support the inclusion of refugees in the context of neoliberalism. Within
the chapter, student-centred pedagogy is explored as a case study of good
equity practice. In Chap. 6 Dr Tina Lathouras demonstrates how a criti-
cal relational approach to community development can be adapted to
engage international students in post-graduate study. Lathouras also
employs a student-centred pedagogy to include the voice/s of interna-
tional students to inform the recruitment and engagement of interna-
tional students and action research to iteratively improve diversity and
inclusion in a Social Work program.
Part III explores strategy to engender gender diversity in HE. The first chapter
in this section, collaboratively written, focuses on a culturally sensitive research
support and mentorship program designed to engage Black American scholars
and graduate students to ‘thrive’ in the academy. Next, in Chap. 8, Professor
