1/15 Senior academic whose MO was to exploit non-white researchers on low-paid contracts to extract data from 'diverse' communities gets a major fellowship - working for them was infuriating, at times traumatic tbh, and an education on #race in #academia.
2/15 I'm now wary of research groups specialising in migrants/diversity with hardly any non-white people. This senior white scholar claimed a level of expertise they didn't have, but got away with it because so few POCs in academia are in positions to question their authority
3/15 In this case this senior white scholar (SWS) led bizarre tours of migrant neighbourhoods as if they were holiday tours, asking researchers to observe everyday behaviour of 'diverse' people in various settings, as if they were animals in a zoo...
4/15 ...and this helped create behavioural explanations for structural racism, in order to fulfil an idea for a 4* REF paper. When data was being collected that did not support the theoretical idea, it was a problem.
5/15 But most egregiously of all was the treatment of exploitable community researchers. If you don't have real knowledge of communities, you buy it - and some prefer to do that cheaply, utilising BAME people including refugees who will never be cited in academic work.
6/15 I've worked on projects who engaged ethically with 'community researchers' - but in this instance the exploitation was so profound that one of the researchers on a zero hours contract was refused pay for travel time whilst journeying abroad to 'train' salaried academics.
7/15 This person, dependent on insecure work for survival, was told to be grateful for having the chance to be abroad. They ended up in tears outside a university in Europe because they were denied 16 hours of pay for two days of travel on a project worth over a million euros.
8/15 I was utterly furious on this person's behalf. I alerted other senior professors on the project who refused to intervene. Another SWS (on 60k) suggested it was fair for the 'community researcher' because they also had to fly on a Sunday outside the academic working week.
9/15 When I found a way to pay the 'community researcher' for travel time anyway, getting approval signed off externally, the researcher was later admonished by the SWS leading the project for supposedly 'bullying Arshad into paying you more than you deserved'
10/15...the 'community' researcher in question - and so too others working precariously for this institute - were conscious of their own exploitation, but were at times in no position to turn down opportunities for further work. "I know how they use me"
11/14 It's not surprising either that the SWS would openly bemoan research-focus on race as opposed to 'diversity' in a room full of scholars who were all white, except myself.
12/15 Watching some of of the people who actively or passively contributed to that state affairs take part in events about race in academia or BLM, is frankly galling. I remember a senior academics suggesting to me that they wouldn't intervene because "this is just a job"
13/15...another younger academic got very angry with me when I confided in them, tentatively, that maybe race was a factor influencing the various problems I'd encountered on the project.
14/15 On one hand we all need to do more as academics to engage with communities who we 'research with'. Yet at the same time, in an increasingly precarious industry with exploitation of staff rife, and yet with unis keen to gesture towards racial justice, there's a real need...
15/15 ...to interrogate how race/exploitation plays out in the processes of research. Why is research on 'diversity' or race done? Who is doing the labour? Who is getting paid? Who is getting credit? Who gets material benefit? Who is heard? Who really holds 'expertise'?
There's probably a lot more to say on this that I've missed, and introspection too about my place in the work I did at the time, and responsibilities I have on work I do now.
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