Alice MPOFU-COLES, University of Reading, United Kingdom
Understanding how a researcher’s positionality and emotions impact knowledge production is important in the social sciences. Black researchers face stories of race, class, colonisation, social justice, poverty, religion, ethnicity and identity that can impact their emotions. This paper reflects on the challenges and emotions during my PhD research experience in higher education in the UK with young immigrants. I argue that the difficulties black women geographers face are a ‘survival’ attitude navigating academia and activism, let alone being made to feel like outsiders. They also have to work hard in academic spaces to produce, decolonise knowledge, be activists on race and social justice issues. It is also to recognise the power dynamics of whiteness in educational spaces in the UK and that there are also few black female geographers, marking lesser representation in academia. I address this by looking at if there is a ‘We’ in feminism and activism? Suppose there was a ‘WE’ as women academics who address gender inequalities. Why are black students and women academics struggling when racism and discrimination continue to be entrenched in systems within higher education?
Mots clés : Gender|Feminism| Racism|Black Women|Black Women
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