Public Lecture | Master MUSIC IN SOCIETY Lecture
CREATIVE WORK:
FROM CRITIQUES OF ‘DIVERSITY’
TO ATTACKS ON DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION
Rosalind Gill (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Correspondent: Christina Scharff (King's College London, UK)
20 November 2025 | 18:00
mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Banquet Haal (Info)
Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1
1030 Vienna
In this lecture, I will talk about the growing body of research that is focussed on inequalities in cultural and creative fields. Endeavours such as art, music, film, television, fashion, architecture and design have emerged as highly stratified and unequal fields in many places, despite their claims to be egalitarian, inclusive and ‘cool’. Over the last two decades, considerable research has exposed and critiqued this, arguing that equalities legislation and diversity initiatives do not work well as modes of challenging this inequality. On the contrary, they are overly individualistic, are inattentive to histories, and tend not to address structural inequalities. Some have even gone so far as to argue that diversity policies have become ‘part of the problem’ of intractable inequality.
Yet, we now find ourselves in a radically changed political moment, since the re-election of President Trump in 2024. Here, I ask how relevant – if at all – these broadly Left, feminist and anti-racist critiques are for a moment when a backlash against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI/EDI) and ‘diversity’ has become central to the reactionary politics of the time, a moment characterised by regressive rulings and executive orders which sees diversity initiatives in all their forms under attack, or rolled up/back into even more anodyne ‘wellbeing’ programmes. How should we defend a commitment to diversity in this changed moment? Is there a way of doing so that holds onto the important critiques we have collectively been making, and makes a powerful social justice argument for cultural and creative work? These are the urgent questions I want to ask (even if not fully answer).
Rosalind Gill is a University Research Leader at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and Professor of Inequalities in Media, Culture and Creative Industries. She is author and editor of numerous books, including Gender and the Media (2007), Confidence Culture (2021, with Shani Orgad) and Perfect: Feeling Judged on Social Media (2023).
Christina Scharff is Professor of Culture and Subjectivity at King’s College London, UK. She has done research on young women’s attitudes towards feminism, media representations of feminism, as well as work on inequalities in the classical music profession. Christina is author of two monographs, co-editor of several edited collections, and published numerous journal articles.
Contact: Please email to Rainer Prokop and Rosa Reitsamer › musicinsociety@mdw.ac.at
Facebook event: CREATIVE WORK – Lecture by Rosalind Gill
More info on the master MUSIC IN SOCIETY: musicinsociety.net
