Editorial introduction: mobilising intersectionality in language teacher education

This editorial introduces the special issue ‘Mobilising intersectionality in language teacher education’. The issue contends that embedding intersectionality in teacher education can provide a sustainable route to inclusion and social justice. While language education scholarship has examined inequities linked to race, class, gender and other identities, it often treats these categories in isolation and centres individual teachers or learners, leaving curriculum, institutional structures and language-in-education policy comparatively under-examined. We adopt intersectionality as an analytic and pedagogical lens for tracing how age, class, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, language and faith intersect to produce shifting relations of privilege and marginalisation, and for turning identity work into equity-oriented civic action. The issue comprises a systematic review, six empirical studies spanning pre-service to in-service trajectories, and a coda, showcasing narrative, multimodal, arts-based, ethnographic and collaborative autoethnographic methodologies. We close with two provocations: how to avoid a confessional, performative model of ‘intersectional journeys’ that eclipses structural analysis, and how programmes can materially support – and protect – educators when justice-centred practice becomes politically risky.