Dimensions of Unequal Academic Citizenship

The CITHEI Centre for Doctoral Training

The CITHEI CDT focuses on Unequal Academic Citizenship: Opportunities and Barriers to Participation and Inclusion of Cultural Diversity and Intersecting Identities in Higher Education. The overall aim is to examine cultures of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in British universities that are pivotal to wider society.

British universities are drivers of innovation, educators of future professionals, and multipliers of public EDI cultures. The CITHEI CDT’s core PhD projects therefore analyse the opportunities and barriers for culturally and socially diverse students, staff, and alumni across academic disciplines and services. 

The PhD projects will enhance understanding about how individuals, institutions, and governments can support the development of ethnic minorities’ full potential within and outside of the university and mitigate wider challenges to race equality goals and widening participation agendas.

There are three overarching research objectives of key conceptual and political importance:

  • To examine individual perceptions and experiences of culturally and socially diverse students, staff, and alumni that may have encouraged or hindered their participation, inclusion, and belonging in British universities in relation to intersecting axes of sociocultural difference.
  • To analyse the institutional-level and broader contextual barriers and opportunities to membership in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and careers of culturally and socially diverse groups of students, staff, and alumni in British universities.
  • To understand how best-practice policies and strategies can inform, support, and promote more inclusive academic citizenship, understood as membership, recognition, and belonging of students, staff, and alumni in relation to British universities (Sümer, O’Conner, LeFeuvre 2020, 18).

The core CITHEI PhD projects are grouped into three themes:

1 - Knowledge Flows

  • Knowledge, care, and emotions inUK higher education ‘EDI’ work
    PhD researcher: Jess Moody
  • Decolonising the University Curriculum: Exploring anti-racist and intersectional pedagogies in higher education
    PhD researcher: Iman Hadya Niazi Khan

2 - Campus Geographies

  • Intersectional spaces of sobriety and academic citizenship on UK university campuses
    PhD researcher: Ellie Moore
  • Navigating Spaces: centering the voices of Black women working in UK universities
    PhD researcher: Naomi Alormele

3 - Experiences and Careers

  • Career trajectories of racialised minority staff and alumni in UK higher education institutions
    PhD researcher: Rhianna Garrett
  • The Position of Black Graphic Designers in Britain's Creative Industries
    PhD researcher: Sandra Adu

 There are also the following affiliated PhD projects:

  • Opportunities and barriers to academic citizenship among Muslim women doctoral students, researchers, and academics in British higher education institutions (HEIs)
    PhD researcher: Maira Tehseen