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Intersectionality in higher education research: a systematic literature review

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Intersectionality in higher education research: a

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Sue Nichols & Garth Stahl

To cite this article: Sue Nichols & Garth Stahl (2019): Intersectionality in higher education
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HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1638348

Intersectionality in higher education research: a systematic

literature review
Sue Nichols and Garth Stahl
School of Education, University of South Australia, Magill, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper presents a systematic structured review of recent Received 26 April 2018
research that explicitly adopts intersectionality as a theoretical Accepted 26 March 2019
framework to interrogate how tertiary institutions manage, cater
KEYWORDS
for, include, exclude and are experienced in ways that produce Diversity; feminist; gender;
advantage and disadvantage. The analysis addresses the following student experience; identity
questions: Within research that uses intersectionality, what aspects
of the HE context are the focus? What methodologies are
employed and how do these contribute to the production of
knowledge? What vectors of identity are included? We find that
gender appeared as the primary identity with which other
dimensions of difference were combined to produce
intersectional positions. Furthermore, case study and auto-
ethnographic designs were primary approaches. This systematic
literature review of 50 papers demonstrates that, when
considering the workings of multiple systems of (dis)advantage,
academic participation is intertwined with social and personal
aspects of the HE experience. While intersectionality challenges
the dominant instrumental view of HE, our review concludes that
there is considerable work to be done to actively address the
workings of intersecting systems of inequity impacting on
participation and outcomes of students and faculty.

Introduction
Intersectionality has been increasingly taken up as a theoretical framework within studies
of higher education. Intersectionality studies are concerned with identifying, discussing
and addressing the ways that systems of inequity, including sexism, racism and class
bias, intersect to produce complex relations of power and (dis)advantage (Cho, Crenshaw,
& McCall, 2013; Crenshaw, 1991). This perspective potentially makes an important con-
tribution not just to research, but to policy and practice in the field of higher education. In
this paper, we consider studies that have adopted this lens in order to identify in what ways
higher education researchers have applied intersectional thinking to analyse multiple
aspects of the HE context. Adopting a structured literature review methodology has
been a principled decision to direct analysis towards addressing key questions about
how inequity is experienced in tertiary institutions. It is distinguished from what has

CONTACT sue.nichols@unisa.edu.au School of Education, University of South Australia, Magill Campus, St Bernards
Rd, SA 5072, Australia
© 2019 HERDSA
2 S. NICHOLS AND G. STAHL

been called ‘traditional equity research’ which disaggregates student populations accord-
ing to designated categories (gender, race, social class, first language, first-in-family status),
a process of ‘dissolving people’s identity into broad, unchanging classifications’ and which
aligns with a data-driven performance culture in universities (Naylor, Coates, & Kelly,
2016, p. 269).
The theory of intersectionality, which stems from critical race theory (CRT), is most
often identified with Crenshaw (1989, 1991) a feminist legal scholar who analysed why
Black women’s particular experiences and circumstances were not accounted for ade-
quately in legal judgements. Crenshaw argued that neither sexism nor racism were ade-
quate to account for the nature of compound inequity. Analysing disadvantage with
reference to only one of these vectors she termed ‘single axis analysis’ which ‘distorts’
the experiences of those impacted by more than one system of discrimination (Crenshaw,
1989, p. 140). To explain the workings of multi-dimensional discrimination, she employed
the metaphor of an intersection between roads:
Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may
flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling
from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman
is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination
or race discrimination. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 149)

Holding that race, class, and gender (and other ascribed statuses) do not operate as distinct
categories of experience but are lived conjointly, intersectionality is concerned with the
interaction between gender, race and other identity categories (Crenshaw, 1991). There-
fore, intersectionality is never additive. It is not about people’s experiences being
shaped, for example, by being female and Asian, but by the specificity of, for instance,
Asian womanhood.
Interrogating the obstacles to Black women achieving justice at law, Crenshaw
explained that experiences of discrimination in any context can produce ‘vulnerabilities’
which make it harder to fight, or recover from unfair treatment in another context:
Intersectional subordination … is frequently the consequence of the imposition of one
burden that interacts with preexisting vulnerabilities to create yet another dimension of dis-
empowerment. (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1249)

The feminist analysis of multidimensional (dis)advantage is articulated with different

inflections depending on socio-political context. North American scholars have driven a
strong critique of systemic class/race privilege and its impacts on Black women particu-
larly (Collins, 1990; hooks, 1981). In the United Kingdom, social class has been a key
focus, particularly in relation to gender (Archer, Pratt, & Phillips, 2001; Burke, 2009).
In Europe and Asia, ethnicity, religion and migration status have been more salient and
accounts additionally often draw on postcolonial theory (John 2012). For instance,
Anthias and Yuval-Davis have voiced that ‘that every feminist struggle has a specific
ethnic (as well as class) context’; thus, a struggle related to any inequity ‘has to be
waged in the context of the others’ (1983, p. 62 & 73).
From its earliest adoption within higher education research, the use of intersectionality
has been driven by an ethical view of higher education’s purpose as serving the formation
of equitable societies and thus requiring that inequities be actively challenged. Jaggar
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 3

(1996), for instance, applied an intersectional lens to argue against admissions guidelines
adopted by the University of California which made no explicit reference to social class,
race, ethnicity or gender. Jaggar charged that ‘a rhetoric of diversity’ concealed the
impacts of ongoing discriminatory practices which compounded inequity for entrants
who occupied more than one category of disadvantage. Mainstream research in HE
often adopts an instrumentalist position, which focuses on the success or otherwise of
strategies to improve outcomes, where the university experience is reduced to metrics
such as retention and grade point average. Adopting an intersectional approach, contras-
tively, challenges the outcomes-focused instrumental view that sees higher education’s
goal as serving the nation state in a climate of global market competition (Ingleby, 2015).
As intersectionality has been increasingly taken up, discussions have focused on key
questions, dilemmas and approaches to investigation. One is the challenge of making
power visible: ‘(h)ow to conceptualise the intersections so that bringing the agency of
the disadvantaged into focus does not leave the actions of the powerful out of sight’
(Walby, Armstrong, & Strid, 2012, p. 6). There is also the question of how to identify
and work with categories, or vectors, of analysis, in coherent but sensitive ways. In
acknowledging that intersectionality has been the subject of much debate and challenge,
this paper takes the form of a systematic structured review of recent research that explicitly
adopts intersectionality to interrogate how HE systems and institutions manage, cater for,
include, exclude and are experienced by, students and staff in ways that produce advantage
and disadvantage. Our analysis is framed by the following questions: (1) What aspects of
the higher education context are the focus of inquiry in intersectional studies? (2) What
methodologies are employed and how do these contribute to the production of knowl-
edge? (3) What vectors of identity are included or, in other words, what intersections
are made available to the researcher gaze?

Methodology
Structured literature review (SLR) is a systematic method of defining, collating and analys-
ing a corpus of studies. A structured review establishes a field of literature for investigation
by defining its boundaries in terms of what will be included and excluded (Bisogno,
Dumay, Rossi, & Polcini, 2018). Typical boundary-forming categories are topical
(content), temporal (historical period) and methodological. Adoption of methodological
criteria in reviews of educational research has been critiqued for excluding all research
other than that adopting the so-called ‘gold standard’ of randomised controlled trial inter-
vention studies. However, there is nothing in principle stopping structured literature
reviews from including a wide range of methodological approaches and indeed this is
increasingly evident (cf. Scott, McTigue, Miller, & Washburn, 2018). This review did
not apply exclusionary criteria to methodology, apart from requiring that papers report
research, defined by the application of analytic techniques to data of any kind. Indeed,
we were interested to learn about the kinds of research approaches taken by those inquir-
ing into intersectionality in higher education contexts.
There are precedents to this approach from researchers interested in equity issues. For
instance, Collins (2015) used SLR to critically analyse studies investigating male-domi-
nated work contexts, arguing that this process was inclusive and enabled comparison of
forms of masculinisation in a wide range of contexts. Gallivan and Benbunan-Finch
4 S. NICHOLS AND G. STAHL

(2008) carried out SLR on the relationship between gender and career outcomes, including
only studies that ‘specifically analyzed or controlled for gender’ (p. 197) in order to make
visible how women’s and men’s academic careers may be differently impacted by insti-
tutional, social and personal factors.
Exclusion is clearly a difficult concept for a project that seeks to recognise the exclusion-
ary impacts of higher education’s failure to account for the complexities of compounded
(dis)advantage. However, being explicit about the basis for selection enables others to
contest these grounds. In our case, we required that papers explicitly state their adoption
of intersectionality as a lens, by using the term ‘intersectionality’, ‘intersectional’ or ‘inter-
section’ in their title, abstract or key words. All papers had to be focused on higher education
contexts, report empirical research, and have been published between 2012 and 2017.
The application of these criteria means that papers which could be categorised as inter-
sectional studies may have been excluded. Arguably, studies that work across or between
multiple identity categories such as race and gender, or social class and sexuality, are
‘doing intersectionality’ whether or not they explicitly name it. While we recognise that
‘a way of thinking’, rather than the use of a term, is what ‘makes an analysis intersectional’
(Cho et al., 2013, p. 795), we argue that the explicit signalling of intersectionality makes a
claim that should be investigated. As Hyland argues about academic writing, ‘it is through
language that we create a stance’ (2013, p. 62). How this stance impacts on what can be
seen, stated and argued about higher education comes into view through this review.
The search engine Summon was used, targeting refereed journal articles and excluding
dissertations, books and book chapters. Over 800 entries were scanned for eligibility before
our target of 50 papers was reached. An overview of the 50 papers and of the coding that
was applied in analysis is presented in the Appendix. In relation to RQ1, which concerns
aspects of higher education, we did not narrow our focus to teaching and learning as is
characteristic of research in higher education. Rather we considered studies that dealt
with academic, social, and personal levels of experience of both students and staff.
Readers will note that pedagogical approaches are not always explicitly referred to in
these studies. Rather, the studies give insights into aspects of the HE experience that we
argue should be taken into account when considering possible pedagogical, and other,
responses to intersecting vectors of (dis)advantage.
In relation to RQ2, we based classification on the authors’ descriptions of their meth-
odology, rather than applying a priori categories. This approach was also taken to RQ3,
meaning that the ways in which authors named the categories of identity, which they
identified as intersecting or being understood intersectionally, were used in coding.
Beyond this, as a meta-analytic lens, we have also drawn upon McCall’s (2005) typology
of approaches to researching intersectionality to categorise the papers. The intercategorical
approach involves ‘provisionally adopt[ing] existing analytical categories to document
relationships of inequality among social groups’ (p. 1773). Studies tend to define identities
in terms of membership of more than one social category, such as gender and social class;
for instance, participants may be selected on the basis that they are both male and
working-class. The anticategorical approach challenges categorisation and eschews fixed
categories; the work of feminist poststructuralists is included within this body of work.
The intracategorical, approach focuses on the boundaries between categories especially
at ‘neglected points of intersection’; feminist scholars of colour have contributed signifi-
cantly to this body of work (McCall, 2005, p. 1774).
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 5

In presenting the findings of our analysis we first present an overview which establishes
some patterns in this corpus. We then focus on two clusters of studies to examine more
closely the nature of intersectional analysis and the knowledge produced.

Findings: across the corpus

What aspects of the higher education context are the focus of inquiry?
Overall, the studies move across multiple contexts within which participants learn, recre-
ate, live, work and form relationships. These include classrooms (Miller, 2015; Phipps,
2016), academic departments (Gander, 2014), family contexts (Abes, 2012; Carlson &
Jacobsen, 2016), parties (Sweeney, 2014), activist organisations (Tillapaugh, 2016),
student halls of residence (Hamilton, 2014) and professional development programmes
(Hunt, Morimoto, Zajicek, & Lisnic, 2017). It was common for analysis to include more
than one dimension of academic, social and personal experience of higher education,
and to reveal how intersectional (dis)advantage is produced in ways that cross between
the academic and the social aspects of life in higher education. Studies were included of
both student (33 studies) and staff (17) perspectives.

What methodologies are employed?

Most studies could be broadly characterised as interpretative and phenomenological in
that they focused on accounts of personal experience. It is important to note that these
are exactly the kinds of studies that are generally excluded from mainstream structured
literature reviews which adhere to positivist criteria for the establishment of an evidence
base (Cunningham, 2001). Case study and auto-ethnographic designs were utilised in 30
studies, providing detailed accounts elicited through in-depth interviews or self-reflection.
There is a strong sense in many of the papers that the research has been carried out as a
form of intervention on selves or social collectives. For instance, Sharp et al. describe auto-
ethnography as a ‘valuable way to expose students to each other and their layered identi-
ties’ (2012, p. 326).
Six studies employed statistical methods, some working with existing data sets while
others generated data using surveys. An example of the former is Radey and Cheatham’s
(2013) analysis of US student access to federal financial aid with the aim of identifying how
intersections of race/ethnicity, class, parental status, age and part or full-time status at
college influence claims for FAFSA1 assistance, and thus ability to participate in higher
education. Of the remaining studies, five focused on analysis of institutional texts, such
as curriculum and policy (Puentes & Gougherty, 2013). Observation, action research
and socio-psychological analysis were also represented.

What vectors of identity are included?

Gender appeared as the primary identity vector with which other dimensions of difference
were combined to produce intersectional positions, named as an element of intersectional
identities in 47 papers. Race was named in 34 studies and ethnicity in 13; in only three
studies were both ethnicity and race included and distinguished conceptually from each
6 S. NICHOLS AND G. STAHL

other. The third most frequently included vector was social class (22 studies) which gen-
erally appeared in identity clusters with gender and race/ethnicity (19 studies). Sexuality
was well represented with 20 studies exploring experiences of persons identifying as
members of LGTBQI staff or student communities.
Religious affiliation appeared in a sub-group of 9 studies. Family status, including being
the first in family to attend higher education, and having family responsibilities impacting
on participation, featured in six studies. Age was considered in 5 studies and (dis)ability
status was included in just four studies. While there is a significant literature on disability
studies in higher education settings, the field does not appear to have taken up intersec-
tionality in a substantive manner as yet. Issues of place-based identities, including those
related to country of origin, rurality or regionality appeared in three studies.
We now discuss the studies in terms of their insights into two zones of intersection,
which appeared as significant in terms of the number of studies in which they were in
focus. First, we examine what the literature has to say on the intersection of gender,
race and social class in the higher education experience. Second, we consider how sexuality
is beginning to be considered as a dimension of experience and what we can learn about
the complexities of (dis)advantage when this comes into view. Not all of the research oper-
ationalised intersectionality to the same extent and there were examples of its use as addi-
tive. We highlight papers for which intersectionality was central to the analysis.

Intersecting gender, race and social class

Intersections of gender, race and social class within the HE context were the subject of
twenty-three papers. Across the cohort, we see an emphasis on how gender is intersecting
with ethnicity, mainly looking at experiences of minoritised groups in Westernised higher
education contexts: African-Americans, Latinos and Asian females (Gonzales, Murakami,
& Nunez, 2013). Within this work, gender is depicted as always shaping the experiences of
marginalised populations; we see attention on the discourses associated with gender as a con-
straint often hindering equitable participation. In considering ethnicity there is also more
positive emphasis on potentially valuable resources, such as ‘ethnicity capitals’ (Berrington,
Roberts, & Tammes, 2016) and immigrant drive. In considering how intersectionality is
used, we learn that when gender is emphasised as intersecting with ethnicity, scholars
often draw on additional frameworks e.g., multi-racial feminist discourse (Ramirez, 2013),
code switching (Bailey-Fakhoury & Frierson, 2014), and positionality (Hearn, 2012).
One of the contributions an intersectionality lens makes is in interrogating equity pol-
icies and strategies within HE institutions and, interelatedly, challenging the invisibility of
certain social identities, such as women of colour. For example, a group of studies explored
student experience in the field of STEM. Within this set of intersections within the field of
STEM, the analysis highlights how intersecting inequities are constituted in certain con-
texts and how context contributes to constituting such inequalities (Litzler, Samuelson,
& Lorah, 2014). For example, the two studies looking at the collective experiences of
women of colour in STEM, Osei-Kofi and Torres (2015) and Charleston, George,
Jackson, Berhanu, & Amechi (2014), show how gender is racialised as well as how race
is gendered. Using intersectionality to problematise the normative concept of White
heroic males in the field of science, Osei-Kofi and Torres (2015) explain how ‘theories
of intersectionality, reveal hyper-gendered and hyper-racialised narratives of identity,
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 7

place and belonging’ (p. 538). For Charleston et al., their focus is on how within university
institutions, shaped by privilege and oppression, gender and race become ‘intersecting
factors that negatively affected’ the academic experience for women (2014, p. 172). This
focus on institutions reminds us of what Choo and Ferree (2010, p. 129) call a system-
centred approach, ‘seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system’ which, in
turn, compels theorists to critique institutional structures.
Reflexive analyses of personal experiences in higher education appear as important
tools in bringing to light the workings of intersecting raced, gendered and classed identities
and exploring how these may shift across contexts. Hearn (2012) explores his own experi-
ence as an instructor in multicultural education. As an Asian American male educator, he
reports on how he must confront his own positionality as an intersectional subject in a
predominently white, Christian university. An intersectional lens draws his attention to
how students enter the classroom with preconceived notions about each other, about
difference, and about the formal curriculum. He writes, ‘One of the educator’s first
goals, therefore, is to help uncover and make explicit these meaning-making frames and
processes’ (p. 45). Resisting ‘single axis analysis’ (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 140), Hearn reasserts
his commitment to further exploring the complex relations of difference when he, as the
educator in power, is also the outsider.
In relation to aspects of the higher education experience, papers in this cohort focused
on all dimensions with a slightly greater emphasis on the academic experience (17 papers),
compared to the social (12 papers) and the personal experience (11 papers). The interwo-
ven nature of these aspects of experience was particularly evident in five papers which
incorporated all three categories. Of these five papers, we noticed there was an emphasis
on racial/ethnic identity with Ramirez (2013) examining how Latinos are influenced in
their selection of a doctoral programme, Sawyer and Palmer (2014) considering how
middle-class Black male college students face the same kinds of stereotypical attitudes
as all Black males and Wilkins (2014) researching first-in-family White and Black
males. Operationalising intersectionality, Sang, Al-Dajani, and Özbilgin (2013) researched
migrant female professors and their career progression while Carlson and Jacobsen (2016)
focused on the operationalisation of emotional capital through a case study of one trans-
national female student from Turkey studying in Malaysia.
This body of work demonstrates that, when considering the workings of multiple
systems of (dis)advantage across gender, race and class, it is not possible to simply
focus on academic participation and achievement in isolation from the social and personal
aspects. An example is Wilkins (2014), who compares the transition into and through
college by two cohorts of first-in-family male students, one White and one Black. First-
generation White men were able to transport their identity strategies from their prior
lives into the college context. For first-generation Black men, prior experiences did not
parlay as easily into usable social resources, even when their academic record had been
strong on entry. This more precarious transition in turn increased emotional costs and
undermined academic support for the Black men. Treating dimensions of difference as
inseparable, Wilkins’ analysis is founded on how identity categories are ‘contextually con-
strained and facilitated by intersectional identity locations’ (2014, p. 185) emphasising
how ethnic and racial identity is conceptualised in reference to the university context.
The preference for case study methodology gives readers access to nuanced accounts of
the experiences of both staff and students whose academic and social identities are formed
8 S. NICHOLS AND G. STAHL

within intersections of race, gender and ethnicity. While pedagogical approaches are rarely
explicitly highlighted in this research, the studies raise questions as to what extent and in
what ways higher education practitioners take into account the ways in which intersecting
vectors of (dis)advantage may position students and staff members within learning con-
texts. We will return to this point in the discussion.

Sexuality intersections
The framing of sexualities and sexual identities was diverse across the corpus. Some authors
adopted LGBQI and/or queer as identity categories inclusive of non-heteronormative sexua-
lities (cf. Miller, 2015; Rockenbach, Riggers-Piehl, Garvey, Lo, & Mayhew, 2016) while
others specified particular identities or memberships such as lesbian (Abes, 2012), gay
(Tatli & Ozbilgin, 2012), straight/hetero (Sharp, Riera, & Jones, 2012) or trans (Seelman,
2014). A third group of studies was more intent on looking at sexuality per se as a neglected
aspect of the higher education experience, in intersection with gender, race and/or class (cf.
Bennett, Boswell, Hinds, Metcalfe, & Nganga, 2016; Chou, Lee, & Ho, 2015). The largest
group (13) looked across sexuality, gender and race. Social class intersecting with sexuality
did not receive as much attention, being included in only 6 studies. One paper discussed
diverse sexualities intersecting with racial identities (Seelman, 2014).
A key theme of these studies is the impact of heterosexism in combination with other
systems of inequity (racism, sexism, classism, ableism) on the opportunities and experi-
ences made available (or denied) to students and staff of higher education institutions.
The studies demonstrate that intersecting inequity systems take different forms and are
experienced differently depending on one’s position. One of the major impacts is in the
systemic denial of sexuality as a dimension of inequity, even when there is recognition
for other forms of discrimination.
Calafell (2014) interrogates her own experience of attempting to get justice as a victim
of sexualised, gendered and racialised harassment, as a member of faculty. She reports
being pressured to drop a complaint against a colleague because ‘it would not be good
for one faculty of colour to file a complaint against the other’ (Calafell, 2014, p. 80).
Similar to Crenshaw’s analysis of the legal bifurcation of gender and race as grounds
for redress, Calafell found that her grievance ‘was parceled by administration into two sep-
arate arenas’ preventing her from addressing racialised sexual harassment (such as having
to listen to talk about ‘hos’ – a term well understood to refer to Black sex workers). This
structuring of separate systems for managing supposedly separate forms of discrimination
operates to deny the intersectionality of oppression. Seelman (2014), whose research
investigates the perspectives of transgender and gender nonconforming students, argues
for the need to consider ‘the simultaneous linkages and separations between trans-identi-
ties and others’ (p. 624). Having to choose between identifying with one’s gender, race,
class or sexuality in order to access student services, or make oneself intelligible, denies
the “whole selves” of those who hold ‘marginalised identities’ (op. cit. pp. 625-6).
The pervasiveness of heteronormativity is highlighted by a number of studies. The
intersectional lens supports an analysis of how this influence works through academic
and social contexts, interconnecting the two. For example, Hamilton (2014) studied the
experience of female students residential in a US college where membership in the
‘Greek’ system of houses (sororities and fraternities) determined one’s social standing.
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 9

She shows how the heterosexist logic of ‘gender complementarity’ worked with and against
the young women’s pre-existing educational, class and gender identities. A combination of
high sexual and class capital (being ‘hot’ and ‘rich’) enabled a sub-group of women to
access the power accorded to ‘a small group of largely affluent, white men’ (Hamilton,
2014, p. 247). Pressure to prioritise socialising over study, and to select academic pro-
grammes which would support feminine identities, jeopardised women’s career prospects
post-graduation. In this way, heteronormativity disciplined women’s academic as well as
their social identities.
However, academic programmes and co-curricular activities that explicitly focus on
sexuality and gender, can also enable participants to access resources with which to
explore issues of sexual identities, including the oppressive impacts of normativity.
Abes’ longitudinal case study of ‘Gia’, a self-identified ‘white trash lesbian’ is an
example (2012, p. 203). Gia’s need to combine paid work with study meant she initially
did not see campus as a place in which to experience her lesbian identity and spoke of
her sexuality as something she did not ‘really think about that much’. However, her
financial position improved and she was able to study full-time, immersing herself in
studies of ‘sexual orientation, gender, social class, and race’ and taking up opportunities
for critical reflection and queer sociability (Abes, 2012, p. 197). While Gia continued to
identify as working-class, this change in her socioeconomic circumstances, which
placed her economically more on a par with middle class students, made this exploration
possible. Cases like this highlight the complex interrelationship between vectors of identity
and social and institutional contexts in creating (dis)advantage in higher education.
Some academic programmes and activities are attempting to build bridges between
non-gender-conforming and ‘straight’ students, with the aim of creating a safer and
more welcoming campus climate. Dessel and colleagues focus on the responses of hetero-
sexual students to their participation in ‘sexual orientation intergroup dialogue courses’
(2013, p. 1056). They describe an activity in which the heterosexual students are asked
to ‘discuss when they first became aware of their sexual orientation’ (op. cit. p. 1068).
This requires them to move beyond seeing marginalised sexualities as ‘other’ and makes
heterosexual privilege visible. This course explicitly adopted an intersectional approach,
making the connection between heterosexual privilege and other systems of inequity
including racism and sexism. However, such programmes are not widespread; they are
absent from institutions’ standard suite of student development programmes and
support services. The observation by participants in Seelman’s study that ‘campus train-
ings, workshops, orientation sessions, curricula, and other educational resources lacked
adequate content about transgender and gender non-conforming people and the
meaning of cisgender privilege’ (2014, p. 624) is more generally applicable to any and
all aspects of sexuality. As well, these studies demonstrate the need to consider the
unequal access of students to such programmes as exist owing to hardship, geographic iso-
lation or psychological and emotional challenges related to justified fear of oppression.

Discussion
The dominant approach in working with intersectionality in higher education was inter-
categorical (McCall, 2005). That is, researchers generally adopted racial and gender cat-
egories (‘Black’, ‘White’, ‘male’, female’) to name intersectional positions shared by
10 S. NICHOLS AND G. STAHL

groups, (e.g., ‘Black women professors’) and as a means to describe and explain how insti-
tutional and social policies, practices and ideologies work to produce and compound
inequitable arrangements experienced by members of such groups. When sexuality was
the focus, intersectional studies were more likely to draw on anticategorical (deconstruc-
tive) or ‘intracategorical’ (boundary-challenging) approaches. This reflects the productive
dialogue between queer theory and intersectional theory which these researchers have
been instrumental in advancing.
In our review, we see an emphasis on what Choo and Ferree (2010, p. 129) call a
process-centred approach, ‘highlight[ing] power as relational, seeing the interactions
among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and
drawing attention to unmarked groups.’ As scholars operationalise intersectionality
theory to explore the ways that tertiary systems and institutions produce advantage and
disadvantage, they are helping to foster understanding of the complexity of these relations.
Intersectionality is not solely about the study of identity work according to particular
vectors; it is also about structural critique and institutional analysis, as Choo and Ferree
state: ‘seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away
from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions’ (2010, p. 129).
Furthermore, we found that intersectionality was often paired with another theoretical
approach. In the section entitled Intersecting gender, race and social class (23 papers) eight
studies were using intersectionality with other theoretical approaches such as critical race
theory (Charleston et al., 2014), code switching (Bailey-Fakhoury & Frierson, 2014) and
fictive kinship (Cook & Williams, 2015). This indicates that scholars researching higher
education could consider intersectionality to be flexible and productively combined
with other theoretical approaches to more fully understand the operations of systems of
inequity and advantage on student and staff experiences and outcomes in higher education
contexts.
Intersectional approaches strongly resonate with critical pedagogy which ‘attempts to
understand how power works through the production, distribution and consumption of
knowledge within particular institutional contexts’ (Giroux, 2010, p. np). McArthur’s dis-
cussion of the need to work across and between emancipatory pedagogies is relevant here.
Critiquing what she refers to as the ‘splintering of critical/radical pedagogies,’ she asks: ‘To
which pedagogy does one turn, if one is female and black, latino and gay, differently abled
and Aboriginal?’ (2010, p. 496). This is not a search for teaching methods, since individual
actors cannot achieve complex social change without actions also taking place on insti-
tutional and social levels, such as through changes in curriculum, resourcing, environ-
ments and policies. The ontological approach to knowledge can also be helpful here.
For example, Fenwick and Edwards (2014) note that critical pedagogy is best understood
in terms of ‘fragile performances in multiple ontologies (many worlds), rather than, for
instance, multiple perspectives framed within a single ontology’ (p. 40). This distinction
between multiple ontologies and multiple perspectives is important here. The concept of
multiple perspectives implies an additive approach in which identities are seen as essen-
tially separate and combinable, aligning well with neoliberal approaches to diversity in
higher education. It is clear, particularly from the in-depth case studies within many of
the papers reviewed, that the complexities of intersectional identities and positionings
cannot be meaningfully reduced to a perspective or to a combination of perspectives.
This epistemology constructs ontological subjects as multiple, constructed through
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 11

difference, complex and non-essentialist and therefore subject to change. Furthermore,

this approach to knowledge deals with what is partial, dynamic and situated whilst main-
taining a central focus on problematising disadvantage and privilege.

Conclusion and future directions

As this review has demonstrated, intersectionality, as a theory or lens, challenges the instru-
mental view of higher education. This corpus of studies, in developing rich descriptions and
thoughtful multilayered analysis of higher education as experienced intersectionally, clearly
demonstrates that an instrumental approach to diversity (as measured by performance
metrics) can never be sufficient. As a knowledge project, intersectionality advocates a dis-
tinctly non-traditional epistemology for generating complex bodies of knowledge (Hill-
Collins, 2000), and an expressly political project – promoting social justice and the transform-
ation of the institutional order for historically and multiply marginalised and faculty. The
effective use of intersectionality as a theoretical framework in higher education research
calls for an examination of the social identities that participants bring to, and form within,
systems of inequality in all their forms, and the relationships between the two (Danic,
2015; MacKinnon, 2013). This project has by no means been exhausted by existing research.
However, there are many unexplored aspects of the workings of intersectional (dis)ad-
vantage in the higher education context. The vectors of language, immigration status and
(dis)ability received very little attention. Yet, we know studies of recruitment, participation
and outcomes indicate real problems associated with these categories, suggesting scope for
further inquiry. Clearly, in pointing out the marginal and absent vectors of positionality in
this cohort, we are not claiming that every kind of difference should have its ‘day in the
sun’ (Cho et al., 2013, p. 798). Rather, we suggest that the contemporary higher education
context makes so-called ‘other’ dimensions of difference salient and therefore that scholar-
ship should extend to the investigation of intersectional impacts of normative regimes of
language, ability and citizenship. Furthermore, the field has by no means fully explored
how even binary intersections (gender/race; gender/class) are inflected by sociocultural
context such as the nation state, urbanism or regionality in relation to higher education.
Finally, given that staff and students have multi-year careers in HE institutions, there is
scope to explore how intersectional identities are experienced over time.

Note
1. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is prepared annually by current and
prospective college students (undergraduate and graduate) in the United States to determine
their eligibility for student financial aid.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by University of South Australia [Grant Number N/A].
12 S. NICHOLS AND G. STAHL

ORCID
Sue Nichols http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6981-2013

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