Scholars of Excellence Workshop - How she thinks: Re-centring academic leadership in migration studies

This workshop is situated in the emerging scholarship on de-centring, de-colonizing and de-racializing migration research. We engage in a self-reflexive discussion on how the socio-economic and political context in which we live and our own personal experiences shape our research themes and methodologies. Through this, we explore how perspectives are informed by intersectional dimensions of privilege and disadvantage and the influence of the socio-economic, ethnic, racial and religious undertones of our times.

This workshop contributes to re-centring analytical perspectives through personal-political experiences, considering the different geopolitical contexts and complex biographies of senior and emerging women academic leaders. We aim to make visible the ‘Westernism’ that treats European and North American experiences as the ‘model’ against which other perspectives and narratives are analyzed, as well as the influence of our complex biographies – even our own personal migration experiences.

The workshop brings together several distinguished academic leaders and emerging or mid-career female scholars, who originate from diverse regions, including South, Southeast and West Asia, West and East Africa, Europe and North America. Our panel will engage with three main questions: How do otheir biography and career shape the thematic choices and directions of their research? How do experiences in work and life guide methodological choices? Last but not least, What does de-centring, de-colonizing and de-racializing migration research mean to them?