Dr Jessica Wren Butler

Summary

My role at Imperial

I am an interdisciplinary qualitative researcher working on a project entitled The in/visibility of the ‘teacher’ role in STEMMB higher education: Interactions of academic, practitioner, pedagogical, and social identities with Dr Jo Horsburgh and Kate Ippolito.

The project is designed to answer the following questions:

• What are the interactions, relationships between, and in/visibilities of personal identity, disciplinary identity, and professional identity, for staff with teaching responsibilities at Imperial?
• To what extent, when, and in what ways, does the visibility of the teacher role entail that teaching-responsible staff represent models or exemplars (to students, colleagues, or externally), and how might this be affected by the above interplay of identities?
• What can these insights offer to the ongoing project of increasing equality, diversity, and inclusion in HE – particularly in STEMMB environments and at Imperial specifically?

Other research

Before working at Imperial I completed a part-time PhD at Lancaster University alongside a career in research management and HE administration, most recently at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, King's College London, and Goldsmiths.

My doctoral research, ‘These little things blossom and then they die because they don’t fit the world’: Inequalities, the subtle cruelties of unbelonging, and the “true academic” in “neoliberal” English academia, explored the exclusionary yet often self-enforced nature of contemporary academic ideals (and their historical origins).

More broadly my research interests constellate around belonging and unbelonging, inequalities, cultural ideals, and the 'isness' of social roles and identities. I am particularly curious about how traditionally 'outsider' positions or experiences might be reappropriated as locations from which to question and renegotiate both individual and collective relationships to the perceived 'inside' - and indeed the concept of a stable centre itself.

My published work should be visible at the bottom of this profile; further details about and links to other research outputs, including my thesis, can be found here.

About me

When I'm not thinking about research I enjoy trying to keep my garden alive, being entertained by my cat Agent Derek Penguin, board games, photography, live music, and long train journeys. I also have a great fondness for squirrels.

You can find links to the various things I do at http://linktr.ee/electrastongue

Publications

Journals

Thesis Dissertations

More Publications