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First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of place in entrepreneurship research, much less attention has been paid to the methodological challenges that inquiries into place presents. Understanding the relationship between place and entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly important as focus turns to sustainable entrepreneurship and as policy makers turn to ‘place-based’ approaches to regional sustainability challenges. This chapter provides insight one researcher’s experiences engaging stakeholders in discussions about the relationship between a place-based university programme for sustainability and local sustainability agendas. The chapter reveals the struggles experienced by both researcher and participants in articulating what places and the local region means to both individuals and to the programme. The findings provide an important insight into how researchers studying place need to be cognisant of the limitations and flexibility of language when engaging research participants in discussing the relationship between place, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

After a period of accelerated workplace change, this chapter takes an interpretivist-constructionist approach to explore the experiences of, and perceptions around, flexible and hybrid working among a sample of women owners/directors in the UK small and medium size enterprise (SME) public relations (PR) agency community. Their views, both in terms of running teams and their own engagement with flexible and hybrid working, are discussed through both a personal and a sociocultural lens, with particular reference to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the gendered experience. Specifically, we consider whether global events have alleviated or heightened concerns around teamwork, collaboration, creativity and culture. This chapter adds to a growing body of research into flexible and hybrid working relating to the PR profession and focuses on gendered experience which has often seen women caregivers and those in unstable relationships at a disadvantage with career progression. We explore whether recent events have ‘improved’ the situation for women in PR. We consider how the life stage and personal experience of the individual owner/director impacts their learned and dynamic attitude development and assess whether flexibility for family is viewed differently to other needs. Themes include authentic leadership and responding to ‘the crucible’, reputation and ‘doing the right thing’ and discretionary effort and ‘work ‘til it hurts culture’.

The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the importance and impact of Black women in higher education, specifically considering how they themselves and others engage with them regarding their intersectional identities. Through a Black Feminist Auto-ethnographic approach, the authors develop and articulate a reflexive praxis to reveal the hegemonic practices that Black women are subjected to at Historically White Institutions (HWIs). The authors, two Black women educators at HWIs, amplify the challenges Black women experience in academia by naming and describing their lived experiences in hopes of providing insights into the continued disparities that exist. In doing so, this chapter highlights how the authors dismantle systems to excel in their respective areas as educators. The authors center their identities as Black women to offer insight and perspectives on how they navigate experiences in academia.