Conference Agenda

When diversity in education is discussed, the subjects focussed on are usually the student population in universities, schools, youth organizations etc. and the challenges educators face, when dealing with the diverse classrooms. Less research is done on the question, what it means for scholars, teachers and educators who are themselves marked as ‘diverse’ to work in an environment, where most of their colleagues are white, able-bodied, speak the national language as their first language, and do not have any own or family-based experience with migration. Drawing on Pillay (2015) it can be argued that: “Being at the heart of epistemic violence, the university is [...] not simply [...] a conveyor belt of automatons, or robots or ideological zombies of the dominant interests and order. The modern university is also that site of constant invention, contestation, negotiation, subversion and potentially, reinvention.” Hence, the university being a significant site where social discourses are formed and influenced, it is vital to guarantee a maximum of participation of different groups in society ̶ and especially of those who are marginalized. To understand how participation is possible or what the obstacles are, it is not only important to identify discriminatory practices the marginalized academics face, but also to identify strategies to build safer spaces inside.

The topic is not a new one; however, most of the existing research is related to the US-American and Canadian context (cf. Niemann & Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, Gonzalez, Carmen G., 2020; Settles et al., 2018; Willie-LeBreton, 2016) and therefore, does not reflect the situation of educators in the German speaking environment. Even though a few studies exist in Germany, Austria and other European countries, particularly in England, their focus is more on the experiences of discrimination inside academia and less on the strategies of resistance (cf. Ahmed, 2012; Akbaba et al., 2022; Arghavan et al., 2019; Caceres et al., 2017; Puwar, 2004). That is why the project to be presented: “Scholars of Color in the German and Austrian Acadamia” pays special interest on questions of resilience and resistance (cf. Ahmed et al., 2022).

Based on the theoretical background of post- and decolonial approaches that aim at intervening in the epistemic violence and exclusion(re-)produced in westernized academia (Bhambra et al., 2018; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), the central questions asked in the study are: “How do scholars of color deal with their various experiences of discrimination and which strategies and resources they come up with to stay inside academia?” Even though the main focus is on discrimination through racism, other forms of structural discrimination like (hetero-)sexism, ableism, linguicism and classism are taken into account from an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw, 1991).

An important aspect of understanding university as a space where counter-hegemonic knowledge, resistance and resilience can be formed, is to understand the university classroom as an interface to society. Working with students means to have the possibility to teach them a critical diversity literacy (Steyn, 2015) that they will continue to develop and use outside the constraints of the academic institutions. Therefore, for the study to be presented, the criteria for choosing interview partners were not only that they should be teachers of color with teaching experience inside a university in a German speaking environment but that they also consider a critical approach to power-relations in the disciplines they are teaching.

I am a mature age South Asian woman currently undertaking a second PhD at a university in Victoria, Australia. My qualitative study straddles education and sociology, broadly focusing on the academic journeys and experiences of inclusion and exclusion of women of colour within Victorian universities. I have unpacked the data collected to critically reflect upon my own biases and reactions to the semi-structured interviews I undertook with the study participants, who like me are migrant women academics of colour from Commonwealth countries.

Fieldwork was undertaken during the pandemic (December 2020-21) and ongoing lockdowns in Melbourne. The contextual background was of Australian universities announcing almost daily redundancies. Several of the participants expressed their precarity, echoing my own fears of loss of work and income. Some clearly expected to be made redundant while others were more cautious in voicing their concerns. A couple of participants had been made redundant and claimed racial discrimination; further stoking my fears of being excluded as a woman of colour within Australian academe.

As a qualitative researcher I am mindful of the tense and vibrant understanding of intersubjectivity inherent in the practice of personal, epistemological, and feminist self-reflexivity (Palaganas 2017 et. al.). Reflexivity is not a straightforward uncomplicated process (Koopman et al 2020) requiring comprehension of the politics and environment surrounding the researcher (Hand 2003). Acknowledging reflexivity as “paying attention to and engaging with one’s own experience and noticing one’s movement of thought over an extended period of time, and by doing so noticing how this in turn affects one’s practice with others” (Warwick & Board 2012, p.4), I accept Pollner’s (1991 as cited in Warwick & Board) emphasis on the intimate connection between reflexivity and researcher experience, and consideration of such practice as unsettling and discomforting.

I identified with my study participants’ experiences in diverse ways, not just as an academic. Allen’s (2004) exhortation that the actual practice of reflexivity avoids tick boxing of academic rigour encouraged me to address the effects of this reflexivity on my own positioning as a minoritised academic of colour in a neoliberal space. Yet I am aware that my socio-economic and citizenship status, education, and able bodied self, render me less vulnerable than some participants.

The politics of my location inveigles itself while ‘doing’ reflexivity from a feminist standpoint. Researchers have concomitantly advocated caution in academic women tending to speak for Others (Alcoff 2009) yet insisted that their voices cannot be silenced. As a woman of colour working within the Australian tertiary sector, I designate myself as an inside researcher (Wohlfart 2020) yet am conscious how similar yet dissimilar I am to my study participants.

I exercise intersubjectivity turning the critically reflexive lens inwards in relation to the impact of my research. This leads to complicated queries on my own minority status. Do I measure my minoritisation and those of the study participants by social class, caste, race, gender, citizenship etc. and if so, how? Concomitantly where do my own pre-conceptions fit into this? Through autoethnography and journalling I work my own learning/unlearning in the process of conducting my fieldwork. As Finlay (2002) states, “we no longer seek to eradicate the researcher’s presence – instead subjectivity in research is transformed from a problem to an opportunity” (p.212). The current dilemma is how to ‘do’ reflexivity rather than why. However, researchers agree that the practice of the same is ambiguous, often a slippery slope and rarely uncomplicated being essentially subjective, relational, and dialogic (Gemignani 2017).

Despite the increase in decolonising Western universities, pedagogies and curriculum initiatives, the voices of participants from the Global South are still at the periphery, searching for a space to get involved in such efforts. Decolonial theory and literature have widely acknowledged the need to include perspectives of marginalised groups from the Global South in projects of decolonisation (Hickling-Hudson, Mathews & Woods, 2003; Mignolo, 2009; Santos, 2014; Smith, 1999; Spivak, 1994). However, there are limited examples of such practices. This paper aims to tackle epistemic injustice in the decolonising efforts by highlighting the voices from the Global South.

In this paper, we deconstruct an Erasmus Mundus programme, International Masters in Adult Education for Social Change (IMAESC), taught in four European countries over the course of two years. The programme first began in 2016 and has enrolled more than 100 students, most of whom are from the Global South. We examine IMAESC as a decolonial project through the hegemonic and subaltern lenses and analyse the curriculum, pedagogical approaches, and experiences of the participants of this programme. We do so not only through our own experiences as adult learners, researchers and practitioners but also through the inclusion of perspectives of our peers from the Global South.

This article further includes the testimonies of our educators in Global North institutions who have designed and implemented this international programme with a decolonising approach. In this paper, we explore to what extent this critical adult education programme successfully provided an experience of decolonised higher education and the challenges faced by the participants and the educators involved.