*This event has been postponed. LSE have decided to postpone events from 23 March 2020*

In debates around societal equality and discrimination, social class has been neglected in comparison to gender, race, disability and sexuality, which are protected characteristics in the UK under the Equality Act 2010. Is it time to afford social class the same protection, or is it too amorphous and changeable for that to be a viable option? And should we even care about social class, since everyone ought to aspire to be middle class anyway?

Erzsebet Bukodi is an Associate Professor in Quantitative Social Policy and Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, The Oxford Martin School. Currently she is Principle Investigator of a University of Oxford Fell Fund project on changing role of social origins in educational attainment in Europe from a historical and comparative perspective and a Nuffield Foundation project on social origins, cognitive ability and educational attainment from a birth cohort and life-course perspective.

Danny Dorling (@dannydorling) is the Halford Mackinder Professor in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford and author of Inequality and the 1%, Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of Empire and Peak Inequality. In 2020 he is publishing a book with Yale University Press: Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration—and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives.

Sam Friedman (@SamFriedmanSoc) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has published widely on class, culture and social mobility, and recently co-authored The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged (Policy, 2019). He is also the author of Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour (Routledge, 2014) and co-author of Social Class in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2015). He is currently working on a new project looking at the historical development of the British elite, drawing on the entire 120-year database of Who’s Who. Outside of academia he is a Commissioner at the Social Mobility Commission.

Paul Dolan (@profpauldolan) is the Head of the Psychological and Behavioural Science Department at LSE, Professor in Behavioural Science and author of the bestselling book, Happiness By Design and Happy Ever After.

The Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE (@LSE_PBS) conducts research and teaching into human psychology and behaviour. Find out more about what we teach and research on our website www.lse.ac.uk/pbs

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEBreakingClass