Glass is a research poem, drawing on qualitative data collected for the research project Gender(s) at Work. I performed Glass for the first time in September 2018, at the AoMO Conference at the University of Brighton. The original 170 line poem subsequently became part of a multi-modal research dissemination programme in the UK and Republic of Ireland (the g word tour) and was performed on ten separate occasions to audiences of between 15 and over 100 people. Performance venues included an airport hotel conference hall, a steeply raked lecture theatre, a boardroom and a crowded art studio. Each performance was accompanied by a visual backdrop of cartoon representations of the glass ceiling, glass escalator, glass closet and glass cliff. I held a Q&A with the audience following each performance.
The first edition of Glass was published in the Sociological Fiction Zine #5 in 2019 (pp16-24) . Since then, I've added a fifth narrative Glace (ice), to address the widespread experience of precarious academic employment.
Let me offer you some clarity about academic precarity - it’s a lack of job security. A calamity. Universities indulge in mendacity when proclaiming their love of equality while creating employment polarity. It’s audacity.
The first performance of the extended version of Glass was at the (online) Gender, Work and Organisation Conference, July 2021.