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Rethinking Educational Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender through Bourdieu - Reproduction, Resistance, and Transformation in Unequal Times
BSA Bourdieu Study Group Annual Conference
9-11 June 2027
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Call for Papers
The Bourdieu Study Group of the British Sociological Association invites submissions for its 2027 annual conference, to be held in Manchester, a city with a rich history of industrial transformation, working-class politics, migration, and educational change. This event brings together scholars engaging with Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical and methodological tools to understand the enduring and evolving dynamics of inequality.
Manchester provides an appropriate stage for examining Bourdieu’s enduring relevance. As a city shaped by historical and contemporary inequalities, it offers a powerful lens through which to explore how class, race, and gender intersect within educational systems and everyday practices. From widening participation initiatives to persistent attainment gaps, Manchester, and the wider UK, continues to reflect the complex dynamics of social reproduction and transformation that Bourdieu’s work helps us to theorise.
More than four decades after Distinction, Bourdieu’s work remains central to understanding how inequalities are produced, legitimised, and contested. In a period marked by intensifying and persistent inequalities, policy reform, and global socio-political change, education remains a key site in which power is reproduced and contested. We welcome contributions that critically engage with Bourdieu’s work to rethink how inequalities are structured, experienced, and challenged within and beyond education systems.
This year’s conference focuses on the intersections of class, race, and gender in education, exploring how Bourdieusian concepts such as field, habitus, capital, and symbolic power can illuminate contemporary forms of stratification, exclusion, and transformation across educational contexts.
Submissions will open in early autumn.
Further Information
The conference includes two main types of submissions: Individual Papers and Special Events (Symposia). Individual Papers Individual Paper presentations last 15-20 minutes, plus 5-10 minutes for questions. They will be scheduled in 90-minute sessions, which include 3 or 4 papers on similar themes. The submission consists of an abstract of 300 words (incl. references). Special Event (Symposia) Special Event (Symposia) consist of 90-minute conference sessions organised by the submitters. They include a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 4 papers per session plus a discussant. The symposia need to be handed in as one submission with a description of the symposia (up to 300 words, incl. references) and abstracts for all papers linked to it (300 words abstract per paper, incl. references). You will also be asked to state 3 keywords and list presenting authors and co-authors with email addresses and affiliations. A chairperson and a discussant, who can offer a critique of the symposium, need to be named on the proposal. Symposia will be reviewed and selected for presentation by the scientific committee of the conference and must be submitted online to the submission platform. Call for Papers - Submissions ˅
We invite contributions that use Bourdieusian perspectives to rethink the intersections of class, race, and gender in contemporary contexts, both in the UK and internationally. We particularly welcome work that situates these dynamics within urban contexts, regional inequalities, and post-industrial transformations, reflecting Manchester’s own social and educational landscape. We invite papers that align with, but are not limited to, the following themes: We particularly encourage submissions that take Bourdieusian theory in new directions, including intersectional, postcolonial, feminist, and critical race approaches. Conference Themes ˅