05: Prejudice, Being Normal, and Social Status in STEM with Teresa Crew

In the fourth episode of Little Science Talks Season 1, Heidi Gardner and her co-host Anna Kebke are joined by Teresa Crew, a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Bangor in North West Wales. Teresa joins us to talk about her research with working class academics, and how working class academics specifically working in STEM subjects present and experience the academy. Teresa is a proud working class academic herself, and has been told multiple times that people like being taught by her because she's 'normal'. At first, she thought this may be a gender thing, but after speaking to some male working class academics, it became clear that they were getting this type of feedback too - it wasn't a gender thing, it was a class thing. Her research delved further into experiences of working class academics, and unfortunately it wasn't all positive - people being judged based on the car they pulled up to work in, academics judging members of the public because of the number of toys visible in their homes, and more. This focus on deficits was rife, and Teresa steers away from any sort of negativity as she pushes through these experiences to find the golden nuggets - the wonderful contributions that working class academics make to university life. We hope that this episode helps to show people that academia is not just for the tweed-clad middle and upper classes that history would have us believe. Teresa is a powerhouse and an inspiration to all, not just people that identify as working class.

Find out more about Teresa and her work here:

Staff webpage: https://www.bangor.ac.uk/history-philosophy-and-social-sciences/staff/teresa-crew/en#publications

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrTeresaCrew

Teresa's book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-58352-1

Book mentioned: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

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