Rethinking Educational Pedagogies and Practices in Unequal Contexts (RGS-IBG AIC 2026)
September 1 – September 4
*This event is part of the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2026. Exact session time and location will be confirmed in due course and updated here.
Convenors:
- Professor Jennifer Hill (Visiting Professor, University of the West of England)
- Dr Harry West (University of the West of England)
- Dr Sonja Rewhorn (Open University)
- Dr Alan Marvell (University of Gloucestershire)
Format: In-person paper session
Sponsored by the Geography & Education Research Group
Education is frequently positioned as a vehicle for social mobility and justice, yet institutions are deeply uneven places, shaped by widening social, economic and spatial inequalities. This session invites contributions that critically examine student and/or staff experiences of teaching, learning and assessment within these unequal contexts. It invites contributions that explore how educational experiences, institutional resources and academic labour are geographically differentiated and unevenly valued.
Contributions may focus on geographical disparities in education provision, for example widening participation, inequalities in academic careers and working conditions, in addition to broader spatial politics of internationalisation, and unequal impacts of neoliberal austerity, marketisation and institutional restructuring.
The session also welcomes work on campus geographies, such as inclusive pedagogies, assessment practices and curriculum design, and how these are inflected by inequalities related to class, race, gender, disability, citizenship and place. Papers might also discuss digital divides, accessibility, caring responsibilities, precarity and institutional policies and practices shaping everyday educational experiences in classrooms, online spaces and the field.
Crucially, the session seeks to move beyond diagnosis to consider resistance, reform and reimagining of power, privilege and exclusion. This includes reflections on policy interventions, collective action and alternative educational practices. Contributions may be empirical, conceptual or practice-based, and may engage with students, staff or institutional policy contexts. The session aims to create space for critical discussions about how educational spaces might become more just places of learning and work.
Potential themes:
- Teaching, learning and pedagogy in unequal institutional contexts
- Assessment practices, fairness and equity
- Student experience, belonging and exclusion
- Staff experience, workload, wellbeing and precarity
- Widening participation, access and retention
- AI, digital and hybrid learning practices and environments
- Disability, accessibility and inclusive practices
- Institutional policies, metrics and governance
- Marketisation, austerity and institutional change
- Resistance, reform and reimagining educational practices