*POSTPONED* Breaking Class

LSE is postponing all public events from 23rd March to ensure your safety, so with regret this event is being postponed.

*POSTPONED*

We will rearrange this event as soon as possible.

In debates around societal equality and discrimination, social class has been neglected in comparison to gender, race, disability and sexuality, which are protected characteristics in the UK under the Equality Act 2010. Is it time to afford social class the same protection, or is it too amorphous and changeable for that to be a viable option? And should we even care about social class, since everyone ought to aspire to be middle class anyway?

Join us for this free panel debate with Professor Paul Dolan and panel members Danny Dorling, Erzsebet Bukodi and Sam Friedman.

Professor Paul Dolan is the Head of the Psychological and Behavioural Science Department at LSE and author of the bestselling book, 'Happiness By Design' and 'Happy Ever After'.

Erzsebet Bukodi is Associate Professor in Quantitative Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Her research interest includes educational inequalities and policies, social mobility, labour market inequalities and life-course research. She co-authored Social Mobility and Education in Britain: Research, Politics and Policy, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She publishes in leading sociological journals, such as European Sociological Review, Social Forces, British Journal of Sociology, Acta Sociologica or Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.

Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford and author of 'Inequality and the 1%', ‘Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of Empire’ and 'Peak Inequality'. In 2020 he is publishing a book with Yale University Press on: “Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration—and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives.

Sam Friedman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has published widely on class, culture and social mobility, and recently co-authored The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged (Policy, 2019). He is also the author of Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour (Routledge, 2014) and co-author of Social Class in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2015). He is currently working on a new project looking at the historical development of the British elite, drawing on the entire 120-year database of Who’s Who. Outside of academia he is a Commissioner at the Social Mobility Commission.