But what about the norm group?

Disrupting Sameness in Dutch Academia focuses on studying what individuals and organizations do to maintain the norm, or maintain “sameness”, by reproducing privilege, on the one hand, and marginalization on the other. The project is based in various academic and professional environments where “professionalism” is taught: in classrooms, middle management, and medical professional settings. It will expose—and develop concrete ways to disrupt—imaginary sameness in values, attitudes, and approaches to professionalism to create more equitable and inclusive Dutch universities.

Higher education is a means of upward mobility that may lead to a better life, employment, and chances. 

But higher education can be a site for the social reproduction of marginalizations and inequities present in society. 

This can occur such that (minoritized) groups have much lower access to and less capacity to remain and thrive within academic settings, whether as students, teachers, researchers, or professionals.

A key mechanism by which universities and similarly elite institutions reproduce privilege and inequity is what we refer to as the reproduction of sameness— a systematic institutional preference for the similar and the same. Despite existing research and EDI measures on sameness in the Dutch context, we do not yet know exactly how to disrupt sameness. Scholars suggest that only through counter-normative behaviour can sameness be disrupted, yet what such behaviour and practices would actually look like, and what works, has not been examined.

Therefore, this project focuses on disrupting sameness in the Dutch university setting. We aim to develop and pilot research-based and context-specific interventions in collaboration with stakeholders from start to finish. Our research bases itself in medical, teaching, and middle management settings in the Netherlands to : 1) examine how, when, and where sameness can be disrupted through counter-normative behaviour, and 2) test and develop institutionally transferable interventions to disrupt sameness in various Dutch university settings.

By targeting and disrupting a key mechanism in the perpetuation of inequity and marginalization, institutions can be in a better position to ultimately valorise equity, diversity, and inclusion.