Research Poetry

Glass

The Project

Principal Investigator: Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas
Project Duration: June – December 2020

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.

Glass