Contributor Biographies

Dr Anna Bull is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Education and Social Justice at the University of York, and co-director of The 1752 Group,1 a research and campaigning organisation working to address sexual misconduct in higher education. As well as multiple academic and public-facing publications on sexual misconduct in higher education, Anna was an academic advisor to the National Union of Students for their report Power in the Academy: Staff Sexual Misconduct in UK Higher Education.2 She sits on national advisory boards to address gender-based violence in higher education in the UK and Ireland. She has also carried out research into inequalities in classical music education and her monograph on this topic, Class, Control, and Classical Music, won the British Sociological Association’s 2020 Philip Abrams Prize. Her research into sexual harassment in the film and television industry was published in 2023 in the report Safe to Speak Up? Sexual Harassment in the UK Film and Television Industry since #MeToo.3

Marie Buscatto is a Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a researcher at IDHE.S (Paris 1—CNRS). She is a sociologist of work, gender and the arts, and a specialist in qualitative methods. Her current work focuses on gender inequalities in art worlds and prestigious professions, gender-based violence in the arts and the paradoxes of artistic work in Europe, North America and Japan. Her most recent publications in English include Women in Jazz. Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization (Routledge, 2021) and ‘Getting Old in Art. Revisiting the Trajectories of ‘Modest’ Artists’ (Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, 2019). To find out more about her (more than) 160 publications, go to https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marie-Buscatto

Having spent her post-doctoral years at Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Japan), Chiharu Chujo is currently Associate Professor at the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (France). Her dissertation, which she defended in 2018, focuses on committed Japanese women musicians from the 1970s to the present. She is currently pursuing her research on gender issues in the Japanese music industry, particularly in the world of hip-hop and electronic music. She has translated numerous books on the subject, including Femmes du jazz (Marie Buscatto, 2007) and Be Creative (Angela McRobbie, 2016). She is the author of several articles, including ‘Chanter l’écologisme dans le Japon de l’après-Fukushima: l’ambivalence de la musique écoféministe chez UA’ (Itinéraires, 2021) and ‘Representing Love among Female Rappers: Transgressing, Poaching and Dialoguing’ (in Japanese, Eureka, 2023).

Soline Helbert is a French lyric singer. A graduate of the universities Paris 1 and Paris 2, she is interested in the place of women in the world of opera.

Sari Karttunen, DSocSc, is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Cultural Policy Research CUPORE in Helsinki. She is also a Visiting Researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki and holds the title of Adjunct Professor in cultural policy at the University of Jyväskylä. Her expertise lies in the sociology of artistic occupations and the analysis and critique of cultural statistics and other knowledge bases used in cultural policy. Currently, her research interests focus on diversity issues within cultural policy. Sari is an active member of the Research Network on Sociology of the Arts of the European Sociological Association, having served as co-coordinator from 2017 to 2019 and coordinator from 2019 to 2021.

Alice Laurent-Camena is currently completing a PhD in sociology at the University Rennes 2 and member of Arènes (CNRS social science research unit), France. Her thesis focuses on the feminisation of the French electronic dance music world and the ways in which this process interacts with the gendered organisation of this art world.

Bleuwenn Lechaux is Associate Professor of political science at Rennes 2 University and member of Arènes (CNRS social science research unit). Her work focuses on collective action and gender and racial discrimination, particularly in the artistic professions. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on these topics in both France and the United States. Her publications include, among others: (with Christine Guionnet), L’ordinaire des rapports au genre (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2025); ‘Distinguer sans discriminer? Lutter contre les discriminations dans le monde du théâtre à New York’ (Critique internationale, 2021); (with Christine Guionnet), Rapports au genre en politique. Petits accommodements du quotidien (Peter Lang, 2020); ‘How Activist Plays Do Politics’, in How to Do Politics with Art, ed. by Anurima Banerji and Violaine Roussel (Routledge, 2017), pp. 65–88; (with Violaine Roussel), Voicing Dissent. American Artists and the War on Iraq (Routledge, 2010).

Mathilde Provansal is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany). Her research concerns gender inequality and gender-based violence in art schools and contemporary art. She published the monograph Artistes mais femmes. Une enquête sociologique dans l’art contemporain (ENS Éditions, 2023), based on her dissertation on gender inequality in contemporary art, which was awarded two prizes: the Valois prize 2020 from the French Ministry of Culture, and the Louis Gruel prize from the Observatoire National de la Vie Étudiante (National Student Life Observatory). She has also published several articles, including ‘Precarious Professional Identities. Women Artists and Gender Inequality within Contemporary Art’ (L’Année Sociologique, 2024).

Ionela Roharik is a sociologist and research engineer at the research center CESPRA, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales—CNRS (France). She has worked on the evolution of temporary artistic labour market sectors, on gender inequalities in the arts, and together with Janine Rannou, has published a book on the profession and careers of dancers: Les Danseurs: Un métier d’engagement (La Documentation Française, 2006).

Leena-Maija Rossi, PhD, works as Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Lapland (Finland). She is an expert in queer theory, intersectionality and visual culture. Her research interests also include critical studies on whiteness and posthumanist perspectives on gender. She holds the positions of Adjunct Professor in Visual Culture at the University of Turku, and in Art History and Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki. In addition to her academic career, she has served as the Executive Director of the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, and worked as a freelance curator, collaborating with the major art museums in Helsinki, Finland.

Paula-Irene Villa is Full Professor for General Sociology and Gender Studies at LMU Munich (Germany). From 2021–2025, she served as President Elect of the German Sociological Association. Her research has been funded by several agencies such as the German Science Foundation or Volkswagen Stiftung, and focuses on biopolitics/embodiment (cosmetic surgery or food and fitness), on care and family, on gender in authoritarian politics, and most recently on academic freedom. She is the author and co-editor of twelve books and over sixty academic papers or book chapters; some of her (German and English) publications have been translated to Spanish and French. Paula Villa appears regularly on all sorts of media, and organises public science formats such as the ‘Gender Salon’ in Munich which has been running since 2009. She has two children and lives in Munich.