Black women’s experiences of working in science, technology, engineering, & mathematics in uk universities: labour. care. abolition
discussion among women about racism must include the recognition and use of anger. This discussion must be direct and creative because it is crucial. We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty; we must be quite serious about the choice of topic and the angers entwined within it because, rest assured, our opponents are quite serious about their hatred of us and what they are trying to do here
AUDRE LORDE: THE USE OF ANGER: WOMEN RESPONDING TO RACISM (1984)
My doctoral research focuses on institutional racism and heteropatriarchal White supremacy in UK higher education science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project is a result of a collaboration with seventeen Black women from PhD to professor, who have shared their felt experiences of existing and resisting in the White, cis-male, classed, space of STEM. Informed by theoretical frameworks of resistance such as Black feminist affect, critical race theory, and abolition justice, this research is unapologetic in confronting the reproduction of White carceral logic in the academe, and how this reproduction is constructed and maintained through ‘ordinary’ acts of racism, sexism, surveillance and control. The project intends to create a care web where resources can be developed, revised, and shared so as to collectively imagine strategies to dismantle, change, and build HE STEM for Black women, and by result support and uplift all others who fight to survive under the carceral eye of higher education, STEM, and society more generally.
I implement the ethics of care and personal accountability when developing my methodological framework. This is crucial to my research, as the topic is motivated by a necessity to confront a supremacist system. My goal in listening to the felt experiences of the women who choose to participate in the project, is to provide a faithful representation of their counter narratives. I am not striving for an objective account, rather an account that they recognize as true.
Furthermore as a responsible researcher documenting the stories of the women who choose to particpate, I must address my own personal accountability and how that plays a role in my research. This manifests through caring relationships between researcher and participants, which includes transparent and collaborative discussions regarding the development of the research, and how best we can implement the research together to tackle an increasingly more intelligent breed of racism and prejudice in higher education. It is imperative that I not only meet the standards of vigilant qualitative research, but also my own personal standards – it must be both a accurate account of the experiences of the participants, and a useful tool in the fight for abolition justice.
For more information on the research methodology click here.
For frequently asked questions click here.
Download the project poster here.
✊🏾✊🏿✊🏽✊🏼
In the spirit of STS and its interdisciplinarity, I am being co-supervised by sociologist and theorist of social justice and science education Dr Emily Dawson (emily.dawson@ucl.ac.uk) and philosopher of science Dr Chiara Ambrosio (c.ambrosio@ucl.ac.uk)
If you would like to take part in the project or have any questions and/or suggestions regarding my research, please don’t hesitate to contact me on: kat.cecil@ucl.ac.uk, or drop me a message below.
👇🏾👇🏿👇🏽👇🏼,