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Short Abstract:
The increasing visibility of African academics in European research centers risks blurring the intellectual and emotional challenges of early-career Africans involved in this process. This panel invites experiential contributions that self-reflexively address these everyday experiences.
Long Abstract:
The long-standing academic collaboration between European and African institutions continues to thrive, including the ongoing cooperation between the European Union and the African Union. Currently in Europe, African academics are becoming increasingly visible in teaching and research. This is due largely to research funding modules that support graduate training, mobility of Africa-based scholars, and international research projects that require work contracts for African scholars. These requirements favour early-career scholars, especially those trained in Europe. The initiatives expectedly mitigate the continuing problems of knowledge production on and in Africa. These African Academics assume the critical mass of intellectuals whose experiences shape knowledge on Africa while offering a veneer of legitimacy to the unequal North-South academic cooperation.
Yet, as a visible minority, African academics emotionally confront prevailing anti-migrant sentiments together with highly demanding research obligations. They mediate Africa-related on-and-off campus problems; Amado Padilla’s (1994) idea of ‘cultural taxation’ offers a fitting description. Their relatively easy access to the research fields creates extra challenges; their Africa-based colleagues view them as unrepresentative of Africa, help to sidestep existing academic gatekeepers, and reinforce the relocation of scarce human capacities. Institutionally, early-career Africans must contend with aspersions cast on their research that undermine self-esteem with consequent pressures to prove themselves. Put bluntly, these scholars may be ‘visible yet invisible’.
Just as criticism of inequality in the cooperation with Africa is rebuffed for ‘politicizing’ knowledge creation, early-career Africans facing job insecurity and the risk of victimization, hardly get a forum to articulate their enormous daily difficulties. This panel offers a self-reflexive critique of the experiences of early-career Africans and discusses their peculiar encounters in more depth. We invite experiential contributions from early-career Africans that address the different challenges, including incidents of micro-aggression and outright neglect within their research units. We also welcome critical insights of mediators who ‘bailout’ early-career academics with similar experiences.