Remodeling the Ivory Tower: Social Science for Social Justice

Join us for an online roundtable discussion that will explore how to diversify knowledge production in an academic environment that often excludes and diminishes voices of color.

This event marks the launch of SAGE’s Social Science for Social Justice book series. Our speakers, series editors Meredith D. Clark and Jason Arday, and authors Francesca Sobande and Tarek Younis will address questions including:

• How do we move beyond preconceived notions of what an academic text looks like?

• How do we define “expert” and why?

• What is the history and impact of gatekeeping in academic publishing?

• And how do we ensure that social science knowledge has influence outside of the academy to impact communities in a meaningful way?

Speakers

Jason Arday

Jason Arday is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on race inequalities within the education sector with a specific focus racial and intersectional inequality in higher education. Areas of his work have also focused on mental health in education, cultural studies, race and politics, education policy and decolonising the curriculum.

Meredith D. Clark

Meredith D. Clark is an associate professor in the School of Journalism & the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power – covering everything from media processes like newsroom hiring and reporting practices to the digital narratives constructed by social media communities.

Francesca Sobande

Francesca Sobande is a senior lecturer in digital media studies (Cardiff University) and is co-author with layla-roxanne hill of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2022). She is also the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 (SAGE, 2022), and is co-editor with Akwugo Emejulu of To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (Pluto Press, 2019). Francesca tweets at @Chess_Ess and more information about her work is available at francescasobande.com

Tarek Younis

Dr Tarek Younis is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Middlesex University. He researches and writes on Islamophobia, racism in mental health, the securitisation of clinical settings and the politics of psychology. He teaches on the impact of culture, religion, globalisation, and security policies on mental health. As a registered clinical psychologist, he primarily attends to experiences of racism, Islamophobia, and state violence in his private practice.