Diverse Identities in Postgraduate Research: Experiencing Gender and Class

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two closely related themes in postgraduate research: the experiences of non-traditional students and the challenge of diversity. The idea of inclusive education at PhD level is barely developed. However, increased diversity in the backgrounds and purposes of students studying for a research degree potentially destabilises notions of the autonomous scholar (Bartlett and Mercer, 2000; Johnson et al., 2000). The ‘scholar’ in the traditional discourse of the PhD internalises the authority of the academy (Hindess 1995) through submitting to intellectual mastery (Bourdieu, 1990) rather than opposing it. In this chapter I show how some research students come to see themselves and the university system in a more equivocal light. The second theme relates directly to the experiences of non-traditional students. Traditional PhD students are assumed to be full-time, funded, recently graduated and oriented towards entry into academic or other research careers. In contrast, non-traditional students are post-experience, working, part-time and often self-funded. The chapter explores how diverse individual research students draw on gender and class identities in describing their route into postgraduate research. Their identities as research students are mediated through locations outside the academy in ways that render the idea of the autonomous individual being initiated into the academic realm problematic.