Position
Professor Sociology Sociology of Education Sociology of Young People and Global Cultures
Chair Knowledge Power Politics (KPP)
Deputer Director of Research (Education)
ESRC LEAD PI Universities and Crises: https://universitiesandcrisis.org/
DIRECTOR ESRC HE&CRISES SUB-UNIT Hannah Arendt and the Study of Political Crises
Consultancies and Advisory Roles (Samples): UNESCO Beams Education Foundation MENA American Political Science Association Mentorship Scheme CARA
E-mail Address
jd217@cam.ac.uk
Phone:
01223 767630
Qualifications
McGill University Ph.D. (distinction 1st class 1997 Deans Honour List) Interdisciplinary PhD: Sociology of Education Politics International Human Rights
University of British Columbia M.A. (distinction 1st class 1990) Faculty of Education and Social Sciences
University of Western Ontario B.A. (Honours 1987) Psychology/Social Sciences and Humanities
Career History
SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow Department of Education University of Cambridge Cambridge UK (1996 -1998)
Visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow Lucy Cavendish College University of Cambridge (1996-1998)
Assistant Professor Curriculum Studies and Gender Studies OISE University of Toronto Toronto Ontario 1998-2003
Assistant/Associate Professor Educational Studies (Sociology of Education) 2003-2014
Reader Sociology of Education University of Cambridge 2007-2021
David Lam Endowed Chair in Multicultural Education UBC 2010-2014
Professor Sociology of Education Education University of Cambridge 2021
Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations
Memberships
- British Sociological Association (BSA)
- European Council for Political Research (ECPR)
- British Educational Research Association (BERA)
- American Educational Research Association (AERA)
- Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE)
- Comparative and International Association of Education Studies (CIES)
Editorial Boards: Service to Journal Work and Editorships (samples)
Executive International Board Memberships and International Reviewer (samples):
Gender and Education (co-editor 2012-2017)
Canadian Journal of Education Discourse (editorial board international) Compare Race and Education Cambridge Journal of Education (executive editorial board) Citizenship Studies McGill Journal of Education British Journal of Sociology Urban Studies Sociology City Sociological Review Cultural Geography.
Profile
Personal Statement
I began my academic career as an ethnographer during my doctorate which I undertook in Canada at McGill University. At the start of my doctoral student trajectory I sought to better understand how young people came to know about Indigenous human rights' issues and how non-Indigenous youth and teachers understood them as expressions of culture society knowledge and power. I was also interested in the part played by social and cultural media popular knowledge forms histories of colonialism and political culture in mediating these expressions. At this very early stage of my career the project was about horizontal alliance and community building and developing collaborative and creative methodological approaches for assessing young people's knowledge of the inequalities experienced by Indigenous peoples and created through the legacy of colonial education practice. The concept of interest therefore rested with social and cultural inequality - particularly the colonial project and its legacies in the present. Concepts such as region space place nation coloniality history memory empire and knowledge were also central to this project. Sociology has always been the discipline driving my work but it never lives on its own in the 'ethnographic imagination' nor can it solely address the challenges scholars face as they seek to critique diverse regimes of power and novel political transformations as they shape the modern education project and the concept of modernity itself.
I would now describe my core interests in three key areas. The first is in relation to the sociology and urban geographies of youth cultures and exclusions in global cities. A second more recent set of interests relates to questions about how transnational urban change impacts upon the most disadvantaged young people particularly as it relates to the intersection of social housing race migration resettlement protracted displacement exile citizenship and youth surveillance in regions and spaces across the world (e.g. South Africa Canada Syria Turkey UK Hungary). Not unlike the field of sociology these concepts cannot exist in isolation because they each share a conflicted and compromised relation to global markets and advanced capital expansion coercive and war-torn states and occupied territories alongside the violation of marginalised groups' human rights and access to opportunity and mobility.
A third major area of research I am committed to is the Sociology of Higher Education Conflict and Emergencies (see https://universitiesandcrisis.org/); the study of academic and student activists in exile; the sociology of intellectuals and post-colonial scholarship in 21st century universities; and higher education and conflict. I draw particularly upon studies of nation-building nationalism and legacies of colonialism and imperialism to investigate the many contemporary crises of critique and political freedoms in modern HE.
I am also a longstanding scholar of the work of Hannah Arendt and am the Director of an ESRC sub-unit - Hannah Arendt and the Study of Political Crises. I also dabble in critical archival studies oral history and memory research particularly but not exclusively in relation to colonial frontier regions and spaces and histories of activism. See link here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003021087-5/young-mk-freedom-fighters-colonial-childhoods-apartheid-past-jo-anne-dillabough
My most recent funded grant as PI is on a large-scale ESRC project investigating the impact of the growth of populist and authoritarian political imaginaries on universities in four countries: Hungary the UK South Africa and Turkey.
Link to project website: https://universitiesandcrisis.org/
Statement On Scholarship: Transdisciplinary Research
Transdisciplinary research has been of fundamental importance to me both at the substantive level and in terms of theory and methodology. From my initial training as a sociologist and ethnographer I have gone on to draw extensively upon theoretical conceptual and methodological insights deriving from in particular continental philosophy post-colonial and decolonial theories political theory border studies and human and cultural geography. I now describe my intellectual position as that of an transdisciplinary cultural sociologist specialising in micro-cultural sociological and qualitative approaches. I have a strong interest in visual and digital methods and interactive approaches but am experienced across a range of qualitative research methods. I continue to work on projects related to youth precocity security and surveillance in Walthamstow UK and Cape town South Africa (ESRC IMPACT Acceleration Grant British Academy Funding former David Lam Chair Funding). I am also researching youth activism migration and cities originally funded by a British Academy project in the UK and South Africa.
Public Sociology Transnational Inequalities - Towards a Transnational Sociology of Education
Sociology is a professional and theoretical tool for assessing a range of different social issues and societal and geo-political conflicts but it also has a significant and generative outward facing public dimension; that of 'public sociology' in the form originally emphasised by Michael Burawoy but which extends to transnational political sociologies. My commitment to Burawoy's ideals of a public sociology is not only to hold our own discipline to account but to represent a public response to what we know about the obstacles for marginalised groups to inclusive democratic participation and civic engagement. Sociology is a tool for understanding how inequality works and its survival rests upon how we choose to engage in the task of understanding global inequalities particularly as they transcend territories and nation spaces and represent legacies of colonialism and imperialism. It is also an important discipline in assessing education's role in either reproducing or eradicating global inequalities particularly under the current regimes of austerity heightened racisms genocide geographies of displacement and containment the vast privatisation of public services and the rise of the far right and populist political imaginaries. My work is always confronting these legacies and forces particularly in relation to the role of knowledge production in the making of modern violence and geo-political conflict. I stand by Clifford Geertz's emphasis on 'thick description' as one of the primary means through which we might begin to read this conflicted landscape and seek to respond. But writers and thinkers such as James Baldwin Primo Levi Sylvia Wynter Sara Ahmed Linda Tuhawei-Smith Adriana Cavarero and Bonnie Honig also loom large in my work.
I am a trained ethnographer and qualitative researcher and I strive to develop creative research methods (visual archival media and film studies approaches and qualitative approaches such as oral histories) in order to enhance the foundational elements of ethnographic fieldwork. I also have experience collaborating with visual artists for high impact public translation.
Academic Area/Links
- Sociology and Sociology of Education
- Critical HE Studies and the Politics of Knowledge Production
- Youth and Cities Research
- Youth Subcultures and the Global City
- Visual Methodologies
- Global Social Theory and Transnational Sociology of Education
- Urban Studies and Social Space
- International Human Rights and Disadvantaged Youth Cultures
- Youth Migration Education and Protracted Displacement
- Widening Participation Youth Transitions and Higher Education
Current and Past Research Projects
Higher Education States of Precarity and Conflict in the 'Global North' and 'Global South': UK Hungary South Africa and the UK ESRC (2020-2024)
The Syrian Crisis in Higher Education (Cara Council for at Risk Academics British Council Open Society 2017-2019) (CARA) Co-PI with C. McLaughlin O. Fimyar & Z. Al-Azmeh.
Youth Citizenship and Social Exclusion in Global Contexts (SSHRC Spencer Foundation)
Economic Disadvantage and Youth Cultures of the 21st Century in South Africa and London UK (University of Cambridge ESRC Impact Acceleration
Spaces of Refuge and Resettlement in the City: Youth Education and Humanitarian Protection Services in the 'Global North' and 'Global South'" British Academy
Course Involvement
- Towards a Transnational Sociology of Education (Course Coordinator Tripos)
- Knowledge Power Politics (KPP MPHIL)
- Education Tripos Globalization and Modernity
Journal Articles and Book Chapters (samples)
Al Azmeh Z. & Dillabough J. Authorial Power Authoritarianism and Exiled Intellectuals: Syria and Turkey. Int J Polit Cult Soc (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-023-09455-0
Dillabough j. (2022 2023). Young MK Freedom Fighters in an Apartheid Past: Memory urban frontier spaces and power. In Julie Mcleod Kate O’Connor Nicole Davis Amy McKernan’s (eds) Temporality Space and Place in Education Research London: Routledge.
Dillabough J. (2022) Higher education violent modernities and the ‘global present’: the paradox of politics and new populist imaginaries in HE Globalisation Societies and Education 20:2 178-192 DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2021.1954497
Bose S. Dillabough J. & Maber E. (forthcoming). Emergency Exit: The Search for Justice and Autonomy in Higher Education Beyond Hungary’s Burgeoning Ethnocracy to be published in Identities.
Dillabough J. & Al-Azmeh Z. (under review). Beyond Victim and Perpetrator Working in the Grey Zone of the Modern Academy: the paradoxical ‘problem spaces’ of the post-colonial scholar in exile. Submitted to Qualitative Inquiry.
Harðardóttir E. Magnisdottir B. & Dillabough J. (2021). Icelandic Teachers’ Perspectives on migrant youth integration and education: citizen or stranger: Special Issue of IJIE on Refugees and Inclusive Education International Journal of Inclusive Education 239-258.
Dillabough J. (2020). Identity as other and the promise of the narrative imagination in educational theorizing: Arendt and Ricoeur. In W. Veck & H. Gunter (Eds.) Hannah Arendt on educational thinking and practice in dark times education for a world in crisis. London: Bloomsbury.
Dillabough J. (2019). Young people heating up in the London kettle: reading between the fault lines of race and class wars of the British Urban Riot Scene (1958–2011). In P. Trifonas and S. Jagger (eds) Handbook of Cultural Studies and Education (eds.) New York: Routledge.
Dillabough J. & Dillabough-Lefebvre D. (2018). The long-distance ethnographer in the new academy of global fetishes: a reflection on the lost gifts of ethnographic exchange in the young lives of MK freedom fighters in South Africa. In K. Gallagher’s (ed.) The Methodological Dilemma Revisited. New York: Routledge.
McLaughlin C. Dillabough J. Fimyar O. Al Azmeh Z. Abdullateef S. Abedtalas M. Al Abdullah S. Al Oklah W. Abdulhafiz W. Al-Hussein Y. Al Ibrahim Z. Al Mohamad Al Ibrahim A. Barmu T. Rashid Mamo A. Shaban F. (2020a on-line access only). Testimonies of Syrian academic displacement post-2011: Time place and the agentic self. International Journal of Education Research Open 1-9.
Al-Azmeh Z. Dillabough J. Fimyar O. McLaughlin C (2020b online). Cultural trauma and the politics of access to higher education in Syria Discourse: Cultural Politics of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2020.1715922
Dillabough J. Fimyar O. McLaughlin C. Al-Azmeh Z. Abdullateef S. & Abedtalas M. (2018). Conflict insecurity and the political economies of higher education: The case of Syria post-2011. International Journal of Comparative Education and Development 20(3-4) 176-196. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijced-07-2018-0015
Dillabough J. & Yoon E. (2018). Youth geographies of urban estrangement in the Canadian city: risk management race relations and the ‘sacrificial stranger. Children’s Geographies. 6 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2017.1334113
Dillabough J. (2016) Review Essay of Education work and identity: themes and perspectives
Journal of Education Policy Vol. 31 Iss. 5.
Dillabough J. (2016). Review Essay of Youth rising? The politics of youth in the global economy British Journal Of Sociology Of Education Vol. 37 Iss. 3.
Dillabough J. (2016). Gender Social Justice and Citizenship in Education: Engaging Space the Narrative Imagination and Relationality. Chapter published in The Palgrave International Handbook for Citizenship and Social Justice in Education. Springer.
Dillabough J. McLeod J. & Oliver C. (2015). Distant cities travelling tales and segmented young lives: making and remaking youth exclusion across time and place. International Journal of Inclusive Education 19 659-676.
Dillabough J. & Gardner P. (2015). ‘Of Time and the City’: Young People’s Ethnographic Accounts of Identity and Urban Experience. Chapter published in P. Smeyers D. Bridges & N. C. Burbules & M. Griffiths International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational Research.
Dillabough J. (2014). Rethinking race gender and access to higher education in Canada. Review essay of Too Asian: Racism Privilege and Post-Secondary Education ed. by J. Heer M.C.K. Ma D. Bhandar and R.J. Gilmour published in Labour/Travail University of Athabasca Press 74 358-361.
Dillabough J. Ivinson G. McLeod J. & Tambouku M. (2012). Looking back looking forward: A short introduction from the new editorial team of Gender and Education. Gender and Education 24(6) 575-576.
Kennelly J. & Dillabough J. (2011). Young people mobilizing the language of citizenship: Struggles for classification and new meaning in an uncertain world. Reprinted in A. Coffey & R. Tom (Eds.) Researching young people. London: Sage.
Dillabough J. (2011). Feminist reproduction theory. In B. Bank (Ed.) Gender and higher education. Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press/Greenwood Press.
Dillabough J. McLeod J. & Mills M. (2010 expanded journal edition ed). In search of allies and others: ‘Troubling’ gender and education (Introduction). Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 29(3) 301-310.
Dillabough J. (2009). Assessing Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical legacies for feminist sociology of education: Culture self and society. In C. Levine-Rasky (Ed.) Canadian perspectives on the sociology of education in Canada. Toronto and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dillabough J. (2009). History and the making of young people and the late modern researcher: Time narrative and change. Review Essay in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 30(2) 213-229.
Dillabough J. (2009). To be or not to be (a gendered subject): Was that the question? Gender and Education 21(4) 455-466.
Dillabough J. McLeod J. & Mills M. (2008). In search of allies and others: “Troubling” gender and education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 29(3) 301-310.
Dillabough J. (2008). Exploring historicity and temporality in social science methodology: A case for analytical and methodological justice. In K. Gallagher (Ed.) The methodological dilemma. New York and London: Routledge.
Kennelly J. & Dillabough J. (2008). Young people mobilizing the language of citizenship: Struggles for classification and new meaning in an uncertain world. British Journal of Sociology of Education 29(5) 493-508 (reprinted in Routledge Reader on Citizenship Education and reprinted in Routledge Collection on the Sociology of Education and Young People).
McLeod J. & Dillabough J. (2007). Social-spatial exclusion gender and schooling: Perspectives from Canada and Australia. Redress: Journal of Association of Women Educators 16(1) 3-11.
Dillabough J. (2007). Extended Review Essay: Anoop Nayak’s Race Space and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World. British Journal of Sociology of Education 28(1) 125-134.
Acker S. & Dillabough J. (2007). Women “learning to labour” in the “male emporium”: Gendered experiences of work in teacher education. Gender and Education 19(3) 297-316.
McLeod J. & Dillabough J. (2007). Social-spatial exclusion gender and schooling: Perspectives from Canada and Australia. Redress: Journal of the Association of Women Educators 16(1) 3-11.
Dillabough J. (2005). Gender symbolic domination and female work: The case of teacher education. Discourse: The Cultural Politics of Education 22 127-148.
Dillabough J. Kennelly J. & Wang G. (2005). “Ginas” “thugs” and “gangstas”: Young people’s struggles to “become somebody” in working-class urban Canada. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 21(3) 83-108 (best article award Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies).
Dillabough J. (2004). Class culture and the “predicaments of masculine domination”: Pierre Bourdieu’s encounter with contemporary feminist sociology. British Journal of Sociology of Education 25(4) 489-506.
Arnot M. & Dillabough J. (2003). Reformular os debates educacionais sobre a cidadania agencia e identitadedas mulheres. Ex-Aequo: Revista da Associação Portuguesa de Estud sobre as Mulheres 7 17-48.
Dillabough J. (2003). Gender education and society: The limits and possibilities of feminist reproduction theory. Sociology of Education 76(4) 376-379.
Dillabough J. & Acker S. (2003). Gender at work in teacher education: History society and global reform. Journal of Research in Teacher Education 3 109-133.
Dillabough J. & Acker S. (2002). Globalization women's work and teacher education: A cross-national analysis. International Studies in the Sociology of Education 12(3) 227-260.
Dillabough J. (2002). The hidden injuries of critical pedagogy. Curriculum Inquiry 32(2) 203-214.
Dillabough J. & Arnot M. (2002). Recasting educational debates about female citizenship agency and identity. The School Field Journal 8(3/4) 61-89.
Dillabough J. (1999). Gender politics and conceptions of the modern teacher: Women identity and professionalism. British Journal of Sociology of Education 20(3) 373-392.
Arnot M. & Dillabough J. (1999). Feminist politics and democratic values in education. Curriculum Inquiry 29(2) 159-189.
Dillabough J. & McAlpine L. (1996). Rethinking research processes and praxis in social studies education: The cultural politics of methodology in text evaluation research. Theory and Research in Social Education 24(2) 167-201.
Keynotes and Invited Presentations (selected)
Dillabough J. (2016). Rethinking Displacement and Estrangement in Higher Education: Borders Divisions and the Power of the Narrative Imagination. Keynote presented to the Widening Participation in HE Conference 2016: Access for all University of Salford Salford UK.
Dillabough J. (2016). Redressing Inequity in Higher Education Access. Keynote to Faculty of Education University of Haifa and DARE Erasmus Project Haifa Israel.
Dillabough J (2016). Cultural estrangement ‘expulsions’ and the re-making of youth cultures in the securitized state: a South African and UK comparison. Keynote presented to the Lakes Conference Growing up and global austerity: Comparing youth opportunities aspirations and civic values around the world London UK Institute of Education.
Dillabough J. (2016). Comparative youth cultures in the securitized state: a South African and UK comparison. Invited Speaker University of Brighton Brighton UK.
Dillabough J. (2015). For Whom Does Freedom Exist: Gender Education and Citizenship. Plenary Keynote presented to A Hundred Years of Women's Rights in Iceland Centre for Gender Studies University of Reykjavík Reykjavík Iceland.
Dillabough J. (2015). Rethinking Visual Methodology with Youth Cross Nationally. Invited Presentation to the Faculty of Education University of Iceland Reykjavik Iceland.
Dillabough J. (2015). Rethinking the educational research writing process. Invited presentation given to the Faculty of Education University of Iceland Reykjavik Iceland.
Dillabough J. McLeod J. Tambouku M. & Ivinson G. (2015). Publish or perish: The art and craft of scholarly writing and reviewing in Gender and Education. Invited workshop presentation to the Bi-Annual Gender and Education Conference Roehampton University London UK.
Dillabough J. (2014). Rethinking Youth and Social Exclusion from the Vantage Point of Hannah Arendt’s conception of historical responsibility. Invited paper presentation to the ERSC Panel Series on Education and Youth Disadvantage (Lupton R. & Bibby T. Coordinated by University of Manchester and the IOE).
Dillabough J. (2012). Gender Stereotypes under the microscope. Invited presentation for the Festival of Ideas University of Cambridge UK. Debate with Simon Baron Cohen and Deborah Cameron.
Talk Title: Rethinking the Historical Place of Science and Eugenics in Understanding the Gender Order of Everyday Life.
Dillabough J. (2012). Case Study: Implementing Public Sector Equality Duties in Higher Education - Promoting Social Mobility among Minority Ethnic Youth People. Keynote to the Inside Government Association Royal Society of Medicine London UK.
Dillabough J. (2011). The Spatial Constraints for Youth Citizenship in Global Cities. Keynote to at the Spaces for Youth Citizenship Conference Department of Geography University of Leicester Leicester UK.
Dillabough J. (2011). Invited Keynote for Bi-Annual Gender and Education Meeting based on the success of Troubling Gender in Education: Past Present and Future (impact: book title was used for the theme of the 2011 conference) University of Exeter Exeter UK.
Dillabough J. (2011). Invited Keynote Transnational Fears and Local Anxieties about Young People Living at the Borders of the Nation. Presented at Multiculturalism: Perspectives from Australia Canada & China University of Sydney Faculty of Education and Social Work Sydney Australia.
Dillabough J. (2010). Invited Keynote Lost Youth in the Global City. International Youth Studies Association Spring School Comparative Educational Pathways York University York UK.
Dillabough J. (2010). Invited Keynote Lost Youth in the Global City. Summer Youth Studies Conference University of Sheffield Sheffield UK.
Dillabough J. (2010). Lost Youth in the Global City: Doing Youth Research in Comparative Contexts. Keynote given to the Student Research Conference University of Northhampton Northhampton UK.
Book and Book Length Reports
Dillabough J. Fimyar O. McLauglin C. Al-Azmeh Z. & Jebril M. (2019a). Higher education in Syria post-2011: A literature review and enquiry. Published Report for Cara and the British Council. FOE UofC Cambridge UK. 120 pages.
Dillabough J. Fimyar O. McLauglin C. Al-Azmeh Z. & Jebril M. (2019b). Higher education in Syria pre-2011: A literature review and enquiry. Published Report for Cara and the British Council. Faculty of Education University of Cambridge Cambridge UK. 80 pages.
Dillabough J. and Kennelly J. (2010). Lost youth in the global city: Class culture and the global imaginary. New York: Routledge.
Dillabough J. McLeod J. & Mills M. (Eds.) (2010). Troubling gender in education. London: Routledge (paperback edition).
Dillabough J. McLeod J. & Mills M. (Eds.) (2009). Troubling gender in education. London: Routledge. (hardback edition)
Lauder H. Brown P. Dillabough J. & Halsey A. (Eds.) (2006). Globalization education and social change. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press (Japanese translation University of Tokyo Press 2012).
Arnot M. & Dillabough J. (2000). (Eds.) Challenging democracy: International perspectives on gender education and citizenship. London: RoutledgeFalmer.