Lavinia’s doctoral research explores discourses on diversity in higher education and the university’s relation to social justice, particularly in the forms of institutional diversity work and student activism, e.g. student-led decolonisation movements in the UK. Taking on an ethnographic approach, she aims to map the objectives, strategies, paradigms and challenges that lie at the core of the activities pursued by the different groups of actors.
Prior to coming to Oxford, Lavinia studied Comparative Literature and Media Studies (BA) in Bonn and St Andrews and Intercultural Communication and Education (MA) in Cologne and at SOAS, London. During her master programme, she conducted a research project on the relation between diversity and knowledge production at SOAS and took part in the UNESCO World Heritage Research Class 2019/20, doing fieldwork on the formation of cultural identities in the UNESCO world heritage Laponia in northern Sweden. She also was a research assistant at the German Institute for Adult Education, Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning, and took part in the BMBF-funded meta-research project Digitisation in the education sector there. Moreover, she worked at the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (ceres) at the University of Cologne.
