Cultural Studies and the Challenge of Inequality Today

Bev Skeggs is a Distinguished Professor at Lancaster University and a Former AFSEE Academic Director. She is one of the foremost feminist sociologists in the world, and has a wealth of experience addressing the multi-dimensional nature of inequality. Her book Formations of Class and Gender (1997) has been profoundly significant in drawing attention to the intersections between class and gender inequality, as experienced by working class young women dealing with the vulnerabilities of daily life in harsh conditions.

Tony Bennett is Emeritus Professor in Social and Cultural Theory in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Professor Bennett's interests span a number of areas across the social sciences and humanities, with significant contributions to the fields of literary theory, cultural studies, cultural sociology, museum studies, and the political history of habit.

Angela McRobbie is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths University of London. She has recently elected Fellow of the British Academy. Her early work was carried out at Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and her most recent books include: The Aftermath of Feminism 2008, Be Creative 2015. She is currently completing Feminism, Neoliberalism and Popular Culture (Polity 2019).

Clive Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at the IAS, and a Faculty Associate of the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. Nwonka’s research centres on the study of Black British and African American film, with a particular focus on the images of Black urbanity and the modes through which Black identities are shaped by representations of social environments, architecture, social anxieties and the hegemony of neoliberalism within forms of Black popular culture.

Mike Savage is a sociologist and Professorial Research Fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. Mike played a formative role in the creation of the III, as founding co-Director with the late Prof John Hills. Between 2015 and 2020, he was Director of LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. He played a key role in securing the Atlantic Fellows programme to be a flagship of the III. This is the largest global programme in the world devoted to challenging inequalities, and he was its founding Director in 2016-17. Since 2019, he has convened the III’s Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice research theme, which has enjoyed major policy and academic impact.