A factorial survey experiment to examine how the class background and perceived gender of job applicants influences shortlisting decisions for entry‐level academic posts in higher education in England

Previous research on the mechanisms that reproduce class advantage and disadvantage in higher education (HE) has focused on students, with limited attention paid to class discrimination in the academic labour market. Whilst numerous studies have explored the effect of applicant gender on hiring decisions for academic positions, little is known about the influence of applicant class background, or its intersection with applicant gender. Understanding this is important, considering the increasing focus on universities as engines of social mobility. Using Bourdieu as the theoretical framework, this study examined the effect of applicants’ class background, gender, and their intersection on entry to the academic profession in elite and non‐ elite universities in England. A between‐subjects factorial survey experiment was conducted with 166 participants from 57 universities to examine how hypothetical applications, which were identical except for markers of class and gender, were evaluated as part of a shortlisting process. The study found that, in both elite and non‐elite universities, higher‐class male applicants were significantly more likely to be invited to interview than higher‐class females, lower‐class males, and lower‐class females. In non‐elite universities, class background was a more dominant variable than gender, indicating that recruitment practices may act as a strategy for growing institutional capital to gain advantage in the highly stratified HE field. However, in elite universities, gender was a more dominant variable than class, indicating that the male‐ dominated historical formation of these universities still creates barriers to women’s entry to the academic profession. This study provides evidence of the role of class, and its intersection with gender, in shaping life opportunities and outcomes, thereby contributing to the growing body of research that repositions class as important in thinking about contemporary issues such as increasing social inequalities. The findings support the case for implementing the socio‐ economic duty in England

The Winds of change in Africa-China relations? Contextualising African agency in Ethiopia-China Engagement in Wind energy Infrastructure Financing and Development

Despite the long-standing tradition in the mainstream media, policy and academic scholarship on China's role in investing and providing development finance to Africa, the majority of narratives assume China dominates the decision-making processes around the engagement. Drawing on qualitative case study rooted in an extensive field based research, I challenge such assertions with contextual reference to Ethiopia-China engagement in wind energy infrastructure financing and development. Situated in the authoritarian developmental state praxis and African agency analytical framework, I first examine the drivers and motivations that contributed to both Ethiopian and Chinese actors to finance and develop the Adama wind farms. Second, I explore engagement modalities and negotiation processes between Ethiopian and Chinese stakeholders along the wind farms projects’ lifecycles. Third and finally, I examine the engagement outcomes and local development impacts of the wind farms. The study found that, firstly, there were a plethora of drivers and motivations for both Ethiopian government and Chinese state and semi-state actors to finance and develop the wind farms. The choice by the Ethiopian government to seek financing from China and consequently award the contracts to Chinese enterprises to develop the two wind farms was driven by a bricolage of economic and political factors. Second, Ethiopia’s domestic socio-economic and political makeup conditioned the Chinese interactions with the Ethiopians to ensure that the Ethiopian government retained control, influence and direction of the engagement from brokering to commissioning of the wind farms. That said, in some cases, the Chinese were allowed to shape the processes where the Ethiopian government had limited control and local capacity. Third and finally, local outcomes and development impacts of the two wind farms are complex and are intertwined across multiple actors. On one hand, the wind farms are new frontiers for enabling environment-friendly electricity generation to sustainably power industrial growth and ensure modern energy access for all, and on the other hand, are seen as symbols of dispossession and disruption of communities’ livelihood capabilities. Such complexity underscores the contested and disruptive nature of development. Importantly, the engagement outcomes and local development impacts of the Adama wind farms were dependent on Ethiopia’s regulatory and governance structure, and to a lesser extent the conditioning effects of Chinese transnational capital features. This thesis’ findings, therefore, help to develop a new reading and better understanding on politics of development in Ethiopia and the role of African agency in shaping engagement outcomes with external actors

Dirty Laundry: Judicial Appointments in Canada

The issue of the appointment of judges is not a freestanding problem. Rather, as Adam Dodek and I have argued, it is part of a larger public policy puzzle, the challenge of designing an appropriate regulatory regime for judges. Any description, analysis, assessment or critique of judicial appointments processes necessarily requires the development and deployment of some conceptual framework. Sometimes such a framework is implicit or taken for granted. However, in our opinion, it is better if we can make that framework—that paradigm—explicit because we can then more clearly understand the nature of the evaluative process in which we are engaged. In response to this challenge of articulating a conceptual framework for regulating judges, Dodek and I have developed a heuristic which we characterise as a regulatory pyramid