Continuity or change in gendered processes in Higher Education?

    Tuesday, September 17, 2024 - 14:00 to 15:30
    2.31 MUSSI seminar room, 2nd Floor Iontas Building

    Abstract
    An academic insider, Pat O’Connor will talk about her experi­ences over a 46-year career in five academic orga­nisations in Ireland and the UK: moving from con­tract research assistant to full professor and Dean. Reading extracts from her memoir: ‘A ‘proper’ woman?’ she will describe the subtle and relentless processes of devaluation, margina­lisation and disempowerment that are often ‘nor­malised’ in academia. With fla­shes of humour, she will recognise that substantial changes have occurred in academia: these changes challenging assumptions that women are ‘the problem’.  Yet many of the processes and attitudes remain largely unchanged. Naming them, she will argue, is a key element in creating real change. 
     
    Bio:  Pat O’Connor is an emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Limerick, and Visiting Professor, Geary Institute, University College Dublin (having previously held visiting professorships at London, Linkoping, Deakin and Melbourne). She was the first woman full Professor of Sociology in Ireland; and the first woman to be a full Professor in any discipline and faculty Dean in the University of Limerick. A feminist and a sociologist, she was a member of the HEA National Review on Gender Equality in Irish Higher Educational Institutions (2016). In addition to this memoir, she has published 120 academic publications including eight books, 80 refereed journal articles and more than 30 book chapters.
     

    Pat O’Connor is an academic insider who is an engaging, humorous and brutally honest speaker. Her memoir: ‘A ‘proper’ woman? One woman’s story of success and failure in academia’ (Peter Lang, 2024) was reviewed in the Irish Times and Sunday Independent, with an edited extract published in the UK Times Higher Education and a book launch at Kings College, London. A full professor and former Dean, she has published widely on higher education, its gendered processes and the gendered aspects of women’s lives over a 46-year academic career as she tried to create change in academia, organisationally, nationally and internationally
     

    **Registration required by the 12th September 2024**