Conference Program

This paper presents an original theorisation of class-based inequality in higher education (HE) by integrating Pierre Bourdieu’s "Theory of Practice" with the concept of "temporal fields." Drawing upon findings from a study at a Russell Group institution in England, we argue that the modern university continues to function as a middle-class space that strategically excludes working-class agents through affective experiences. While other Bourdieusian analysis has focused on "hysteresis"—the lag between habitus and field—we contend that the academic field is a dynamic "temporal field" where the "rules of the game" are increasingly structured by accelerated pace and long-term strategic horizons by players within a specific field. Bourdieusian scholarship emphasises "hysteresis" as an externalised lag between habitus and field, this paper shifts the analytical focus toward the internal “time-space" of the class-mobile agent (Keil, 2023). We propose that this exclusion is best understood through a shared structural homology between staff and students, manifested in a "cleft habitus" (Bourdieu, 2002) that operates as a temporal bridge between a persistent past and a desired academic future.

This paper presents initial findings from methods utilising staff-student research events, specifically "Story Circles" which saw staff and students discussing their experiences of being working-class in a shared space. Our research reveals a profound structural homology: working-class staff and students face strikingly similar barriers to belonging and success, despite their differing hierarchical positions within these elite spaces. Both groups inhabit a "cleft habitus" characterised by a fractured sense of identity and the constant emotional labour of navigating an alien cultural terrain.

Our research reveals a profound structural homology: working-class staff and students face strikingly similar barriers to belonging, despite their differing hierarchical positions. We theorise this experience through an "in-between temporal space"—a state of "in-between-status" generated by the cleft habitus. This space acts as a site of collision between the primary habitus’s affinity for the past and the secondary habitus’s orientation toward a desired academic future. Crucially, the desired academic future is based on unknown changes within spaces responsible for symbolic violence and disruptive, affective experiences (Threadgold, 2020). This internal "time-space" is where the "transfuge" (Köbli, 2025) negotiates the tension between the "notion of the possible" rooted in their origins and the "logic of practice" demanded by the elite field. By positioning the cleft habitus as a temporal bridge, we illuminate how agents manage a "doubled temporality": a persistent loyalty to class roots alongside the strategic cultivation of a future-oriented academic self. This theorisation aims to move beyond reproduction to capture the active, temporal "becoming" of the class-mobile agent.