Intersectionality and Diversity in Higher Education,

What is ‘intersectionality’ and why does it matter to teachers and researchers of diversity in higher education? In this text, we approach intersectionality not just as concept that allows a critical enquiry into how class, gender and race shape society but also as praxis for social justice (Birge and Hill Collins 2016). For feminist researchers working on/about diversity, intersectionality constitutes a way of doing, sensing and thinking about the worlds we inhabit and construct, as teachers and researchers in higher education (Ahmed 2012, Harcourt et. al. 2016, Icaza 2015). Intersectionality has allowed feminist researchers to consider people and groups’ nuances in their experiences of exclusion and inclusion as emerging from the intersections of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, body ableness and so on, instead of as an effect of one single mark or category of difference (Harcourt, Icaza and Vargas 2016). In education, researchers working with an intersectional approach “tackle questions of how interactions between social inequalities such as race, class, gender, sexuality and ability shape educational experiences and outcomes of disenfranchised populations. The synergy linking scholarship and practice affect not just teacher training, curriculum design and research on pedagogy for schools, but it also shapes the many sub-specialities within education scholarship” (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016:39). Meanwhile for Dill ‘intersectionality is the intellectual core of diversity work” (Dill 2009: 229). This text is not so focused on explaining what intersectionality is but what intersectionality does to research on diversity in higher education (Birge and Hill Collins 2016). To do so, it is divided in the following 4 sections. The first section is a brief introduction to what is intersectionality and where it comes from as a term and approach to (feminist) research. The second section presents a personal reflection written by one of us (Icaza) on what means for the research process to embody diversity while conducting research in an academic setting (Icaza 2015; Icaza 2017 forthcoming). This reflection serves to illustrate intersectionality as a methodological backbone but also to enquiry what it means to embody diversity as a form of knowing in the research process (Harcourt et. al. 216, Barbosa et. al. 2015, Icaza 2015). What is ‘intersectionality’ and why does it matter to teachers and researchers of diversity in higher education? In this text, we approach intersectionality not just as concept that allows a critical enquiry into how class, gender and race shape society but also as praxis for social justice (Birge and Hill Collins 2016). For feminist researchers working on/about diversity, intersectionality constitutes a way of doing, sensing and thinking about the worlds we inhabit and construct, as teachers and researchers in higher education (Ahmed 2012, Harcourt et. al. 2016, Icaza 2015). Intersectionality has allowed feminist researchers to consider people and groups’ nuances in their experiences of exclusion and inclusion as emerging from the intersections of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, body ableness and so on, instead of as an effect of one single mark or category of difference (Harcourt, Icaza and Vargas 2016). In education, researchers working with an intersectional approach “tackle questions of how interactions between social inequalities such as race, class, gender, sexuality and ability shape educational experiences and outcomes of disenfranchised populations. The synergy linking scholarship and practice affect not just teacher training, curriculum design and research on pedagogy for schools, but it also shapes the many sub-specialities within education scholarship” (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016:39). Meanwhile for Dill ‘intersectionality is the intellectual core of diversity work” (Dill 2009: 229). This text is not so focused on explaining what intersectionality is but what intersectionality does to research on diversity in higher education (Birge and Hill Collins 2016). To do so, it is divided in the following 4 sections. The first section is a brief introduction to what is intersectionality and where it comes from as a term and approach to (feminist) research. The second section presents a personal reflection written by one of us (Icaza) on what means for the research process to embody diversity while conducting research in an academic setting (Icaza 2015; Icaza 2017 forthcoming). This reflection serves to illustrate intersectionality as a methodological backbone but also to enquiry what it means to embody diversity as a form of knowing in the research process (Harcourt et. al. 216, Barbosa et. al. 2015, Icaza 2015).