Individual weakness to collective strength: (Re)creating the self as a ‘working-class academic’

Abstract

This article is an autoethnographic account of my experience of becoming a working-class academic. I have found that, in addition to overcoming structural inequalities, ‘escaping’ a working-class home to seek a new life in a strange world has required the construction of a new identity that is neither entirely ‘academic’ nor entirely ‘working-class’. I discuss my perspective on class privilege and inequality through my experience of being part of a group of people who tend to exist in academia as invisible individuals. I have written this article as a practical exercise that contributes to increasing this visibility because, by becoming a more visible and collective community, it is possible to challenge existing notions of what it means to be working-class, to be an academic or to be both.