Conference Program

In recent years, intersectionality has become increasingly prominent in educational research, predominantly serving as a theoretical paradigm for examining the complex interplay of inequalities, power relations, and the dynamics of exclusion and participation within educational contexts. Nevertheless, its systematic application in educational research remains inconsistent and fragmented (Varsik & Gorochovskij, 2023; Gross & Portera, 2025; Pham Xuan, 2025), compared to its widespread use in gender and social studies (Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 2019). A persistent tension can be observed between the use of intersectionality as a critical conceptual framework and its operationalisation in empirical research, educational policies, and pedagogical practices.

This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review on intersectionality within the field of empirical educational research, mapping theoretical developments, methodological approaches, emerging areas of inquiry, and the results obtained between 2015 and 2025. The review was conducted through a structured analysis of two international databases (Scopus and Web of Science), following the PRISMA guidelines for identification, screening, and synthesis (Page et al., 2021). The initial search identified 185 records. After removing duplicates, excluding publications prior to 2015, and distinguishing empirical studies from non-empirical contributions, a final corpus of 81 empirical studies was selected for further analysis.

The findings indicate a gradual consolidation of intersectionality as a critical analytical lens for interpreting the plurality of identities and educational experiences. At the same time, a significant share of the literature remains predominantly theoretical, while empirical research is still unequally developed and concentrated mainly in Western higher education contexts.

The analysis of the papers explores how intersectionality is conceptualised and operationalised within empirical educational research, examining its translation into research design, sampling strategies, data collection methods, and identifying recurring patterns of use across the selected corpus. It also delves into the results of studies, examining how these findings are intrinsically linked to the methodological framework and methods employed in the process of knowledge production.

This systematic review contributes to clarifying both the potential and the current limitations of intersectionality in educational research, offering an overview of existing approaches and highlighting areas where further methodological development is needed across different educational levels, institutional settings, and diverse contexts.

Schools in post-migrant societies are increasingly finding themselves in a difficult position. They are expected to provide safe and inclusive learning environments, yet there is growing public and political backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) (Kuhar & Zobec, 2017). This talk puts forward a proposal for an Intersectional Participatory Safety & Inclusion Audit (IPSIA) as a school development methodology to operationalize parts of the SDG Target 4 (‘safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments’) as democratic accountability in practice, rather than declarative policy. Drawing on the concept of intersectionality, IPSIA identifies safety, belonging, the right to express oneself, and access to remedies as the three interdependent democratic pillars of school life. These pillars are frequently overlooked by single-axis indicators and 'average' school climate metrics (McCall, 2005; Thapa et al., 2013). IPSIA is therefore compatible with current international projects, such as the ‘Lets Care’ project funded by the Horizon programme. This transnational research network comprises nine countries and 120 schools, and is developing a 'safe school' model. Through participatory workshops and collaborative research, teachers and pupils will develop strategies to foster emotional security and a sense of belonging in everyday school life.

However, IPSIA takes a different approach with a structured, four-stage process covering from audit to implementation. First, schools conduct participatory hotspot mapping. This involves student-led mapping and walk-alongs, as well as scenario-based mini-interviews, to identify the specific spaces, routines and moments of interaction where feelings of safety and belonging are experienced or lacking (Mitra, 2004). Secondly, the resulting hotspot patterns guide an institutional analysis focused on mechanisms that trace how specific practices and rules (routines, assessment and feedback practices, language rules and complaint procedures), produce or amplify vulnerabilities in particular intersectional constellations (McCall, 2005). Thirdly, the findings from the first two stages are used in participatory sense-making workshops, where students and educators jointly interpret the evidence and translate it into change hypotheses (i.e. what needs to change, for whom, through which mechanism and why). This co-interpretation stage is designed to counter epistemic injustice by treating lived experience as an indispensable analytical resource (Fricker, 2007). Fourthly, the jointly developed hypotheses for change are translated into concrete school development actions and measures. Subsequently, iterative checks are carried out to determine whether the measures are reaching all relevant groups and situations and whether certain school routines continue to cause challenges (McCall, 2005; Thapa et al., 2013). The proposed action audit therefore has three objectives: (a) the practical implementation of SDG 4 for school development; (b) developing a replicable, participatory, intersectional method that retains accountability (McCall, 2005); (c) providing guidance on the democratic governance of inclusion in the face of DEI backlash, through transparent remedial infrastructures, durable student voice architectures and reforms at the level of individual schools (Mitra, 2004; Tabron et al., 2024). After the presentation, the audience will be invited to participate in a discussion about the further development of the methodological school development proposal, as the project idea is to be submitted for third-party funding.

Across Europe, supplementary higher education programmes and other forms of recognition of foreign qualifications for migrant academics have emerged as key policy instruments within agendas of integration, employability, and widening participation in higher education (https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/inclusive-and-connected-higher-education/higher-education-for-migrants-and-refugees ). In Sweden, such programmes that are often framed as short, targeted, and profession-oriented pathways, aim to facilitate rapid transitions into regulated professions in, for instance, the educational or medical sector (Messina Dahlberg, Vigmo & Surian, 2021). This paper examines how these ambitions are articulated and negotiated in policy through a narrative analysis of (intern)national and institutional documents governing supplementary higher education, with a particular focus on the Swedish teacher training program (ULV). This particular programme, which targets immigrant teachers and academics is by far the largest supplementary program, with 74 percent of registered students (Odelberg & Viberg, 2022; UKÄ, 2019). The ULV program is designed for individuals with a foreign teaching degree or an academic degree in a subject area that corresponds to school subjects included in the Swedish school curriculum.

The study is situated within the broader context of widening participation and integration policies in higher education, where inclusion is often framed in instrumental terms linked to labour market efficiency and to address shortages of professional skills. Drawing on intersectionality as an analytical lens, this study explores how policy narratives construct “the migrant academic” or the “scholar at-risk” through intersecting dimensions of migration status, language competence, professional identity, and institutional belonging (Hancock, 2016). These constructions are further examined through a decolonial perspective, which foregrounds questions of epistemic authority, recognition of prior knowledge, and the asymmetrical process of recognition of professional and academic competences acquired in the so-called “third countries” (non-EU/EEA).

Methodologically, the paper adopts a narrative approach to policy analysis (Bansel, 2015, Fenwick et al. 2015), treating policy not as static text but as a situated practice that produces particular subject positions, expectations, and trajectories. In dialogue with sociomaterial perspectives (Gherardi, 2017; Nicolini, 2013), the analysis attends to how policies assemble human and non-human elements (language requirements, assessment policies, documentation practices, and time/space framings) into sociomaterial configurations that enable some forms of participation while constraining others. Preliminary findings show how this relational focus shed lights on the tensions between a focus on rapid labour market entry and on integration, belonging, and professional recognition but also between standardisation and diversity. Even though supplementary programmes are framed as inclusive solutions, they often rely on narrow imaginaries of employability and professional becoming as the only narrative for successful integration of migrant academics. By foregrounding intersectional and decolonial critiques, the paper contributes to debates on the democratization of postmigrant societies, arguing for policy approaches that move beyond deficit-oriented and time-compressed models of integration. Such a shift, we argue, calls for relational and epistemically just policy framings of supplementary higher education and qualifications recognition, that tell the story of migrant academics not only as employable future workers, but as knowledge-bearing subjects within higher education.

Gender-based violences, understood as any physical, verbal, symbolic and psychological violence acted against women, homosexual, bisexual and trans* people (Educare alle Differenze, 2024) are caused by structurally embedded gendered power asymmetries, rooted in patriarchal models that affect young people as adults, and which intersect with other oppressions generating more severe traumas (Crenshaw, 1989; Walby, 1990).

Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is internationally recognized as a concrete solution to tackle discrimination and violence, as it allows to learn how to recognize, react and not perpetrate them (WHO, 2010; UNESCO, 2018), to act on sexism, homonegativity, hegemonic masculinity, bullying and cyberbullying (Demozzi and Ghigi, 2024), to protect the sexual rights of all subjectives (WAS, 2014). However, when implemented within schooling systems shaped by coloniality and hetero-cisnormative institutional cultures, CSE risks reproducing the very hierarchies it seeks to dismantle. Despite attempts to legislate on the matter (Bruno, 2024), Italy remains one of the few European countries not to include compulsory sex education in school curricula, resulting in a fragmented framework with significant regional disparities, particularly disadvantaging the center-south (Chinelli et al., 2024; Lo Moro et al., 2023), also due to the opposition of the so-called “anti-gender” movements (Garbagnoli, 2014; Selmi, 2015; Bellé and Poggio, 2018; Lavizzari and Prearo, 2019; Barbino, 2025; Prearo, 2025), which challenge the epistemic legitimacy of gender and sexuality knowledge within public education.

This study aims to explore the contribution of critical queer and decolonial theories on education (Lugones, 2007; Walsh & Mignolo, 2018) to the debate on CSE, foregrounding the intersections of power, knowledge production and institutional practices in order to deconstruct, from an educational perspective, those monolithic, hetero-cisnormative and Eurocentric visions that see the study of sexualities as taboo and deviation from the "norm". The hypothesis is to experiment a model of CSE that can broaden, at a theoretical level, the current approaches promoted by international organizations towards a more resistant, intersectional and inclusive understanding of sexuality and affectivity, which could be effectively useful to eradicate the root causes of oppression, discrimination and gender-based violence from an early age and starting from schools (Borghi, 2011; Burgio, 2019; Di Grigoli, 2023; Rinaldi, 2023; Seal, 2019).

Adult and community education has historically functioned as a democratic counterspace for learners marginalised by the Irish Education System. In Ireland, widening participation policy under the National Access Plan (NAP) identifies priority groups including socio-economically disadvantaged learners, lone parents, mature students, disabled learners, members of the Traveller community, and migrant communities. While these categories structure policy intervention, lived experience is intersectional and relational. Adult learners frequently navigate multiple, overlapping forms of structural inequality.

This paper presents findings from an ongoing participatory action research (PAR) collaboration between a regional technological university and a community-based adult education organisation working predominantly with learners across several National Access Plan priority groups. The study examines how adult community education functions not simply as a preparatory bridge into higher education, but as a democratic learning space that reshapes learners’ epistemic positioning.

PAR was mobilised as both research methodology and adult pedagogical practice. Peer researchers with lived experience of community education were centrally involved in research design, facilitation of focus groups, and collaborative analysis. Data was generated through learner dialogues, community stakeholder discussions, and structured reflective workshops. This approach intentionally redistributed epistemic authority, challenging conventional researcher participant hierarchies.

Findings indicate that adult community education cultivates forms of epistemic confidence that are foundational to progression. Participants describe a shift from internalised deficit narratives to recognition of lived experience as legitimate knowledge. For learners situated at the intersection of class disadvantage, gendered care responsibilities, disability, and migration, this transformation is precondition for engagement with formal higher education systems.

However, the research also highlights tensions. The paper argues that a culture of inclusion in lifelong learning requires structural reciprocity between community education and universities. Adult education must be recognised as a site of knowledge production. Democratic partnership, co-designed curricula, and shared governance are proposed as components of what we term “intersectional pathway architecture.”

By situating adult community education within debates on inclusion and epistemic justice, this paper contributes empirical insight into how lifelong learning can operate as democratic renewal.