FUTUREU FORUM, Thursday, August 10, LIVE with Dr. Kirsty Morrin, “Against Entrepreneurship”

Thursday, August 10, 1:30p, Eastern Time


Dr. Morrin’s talk maps out conceptual, historical, and spatial understandings of ‘entrepreneurship’ in education. It explores entrepreneurship as a conceptual term, a vocational practice, and an emplaced policy initiative in educational settings over time. Building on Sennett’s intervention to see entrepreneurs as a form of ‘ideal everymen’ [sic], the talk will argue that entrepreneurship has become the ‘ideal every narrative in educational discourse.” Data presented in the talk reveals how entrepreneurial agendas conceal precariousness and reproduce inequalities. The talk calls for a move against the current discourse for entrepreneurial initiatives in education and, instead, suggests the need for a renewed critical conversation about its repeated failures.

Dr. Kirsty Morrin

Dr. Kirsty Morrin is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Liverpool, England. Her research explores social inequalities and is focused on forms of ‘public-private’ partnership in state education. Kirsty has published on many issues, including educational inequalities, entrepreneurship education, social inequalities (race, class, and gender), and critical social theory. She is a co-author with Christy Kulz and Ruth McGinity of Inside the Education Lab: Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on the Academies Experiment (Manchester University Press, 2022). Dr. Morrin is also the author of the forthcoming Academies, Entrepreneurship, and Inequality: The Politics of Successful Failure, scheduled to be published by Bristol University Press in 2024.

Ruben Martinez

Dr. Rubén O. Martinez, professor emeritus of sociology, director emeritus of the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University, and FutureU’s founder, will host the program.

Nathan Rousseau

Dr. Nathan Rousseau, professor of sociology at Indiana University Purdue University Columbus and frequent FutureU contributor, will serve as the session discussant.

This program will be broadcast live via ZOOM on FutureU’s YouTube channel. It will also be available for archived viewing.

NOTE–If you would like to engage Drs. Morrin, Martinez, and Rousseau live on August 10: Please Contact Professor Frank Fear at fear@msu.edu to obtain the ZOOM access link.

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