Contribution short abstract:

Black researchers in the UK 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 I experienced within academia during my PhD research journey.

Contribution long abstract:

Understanding how a researcher’s positionality and emotions impact knowledge production is important in the social sciences. Black researchers in the UK 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 I experienced within academia during my PhD research journey. My PhD was about Identity, transnational, translocal Activities and Intergenerational Relationships for Young Zimbabweans in the UK. I argue that the difficulties black women face is a ‘survival’ attitude navigating academia and activism, let alone being made to feel like outsiders. They also have to work hard in the UK academic spaces as activists on race and social justice issues to promote and decolonise knowledge while at the same time, they are expected to achieve excellence in their research work. 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 in my discipline, 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 black women in UK universities struggling with racism and discrimination continuing to be entrenched in systems within higher education?