Background and Introduction: Connected Struggles and Solidarity.  Melissa Williams (Co-Editor and Conference Co-Organiser) and Susannah G Williams (Co-Editor and Conference Co-Organiser).

Background and Impacts of the Conference

This working paper was created following the second interdisciplinary ‘Race’ and Socially Engaged Research: Open and Inclusive Conference for PGRs and ECRs to provide an accessible outlet for delegates to share and showcase their reflections, ideas and work.[1] The paper is intended to be disruptive and decentre harmful, hegemonic approaches to research. As the conference organisers highlighted in last year’s Working Paper introduction, for us, ‘disruptive’ research and knowledge exchange is that which “challenges harmful hegemonic structures, power relations, institutions and epistemological and ontological assumptions. This includes research that disrupts the enduring coloniality of knowledge production; epistemic injustice; colonial structures and power relations; racism; heteronormativity; neoliberalism; ableism; and gendered injustice.” (Williams and Williams, 2024). We hope this paper goes some way towards challenging hegemonic structures such as these through its different forms and formats of writing, critical and innovative methodologies including artistic approaches, and being used by several authors as an open space for exploration and experimentation.

The contributions contained within this working paper, build upon conversations from the 2025 annual ‘Race’ and Socially Engaged Research Conference, in addition to works and events from previous years. The Anti-Racism Working Group set up the annual conference in 2023 after finding, from personal experience and discussion with colleagues and friends, that ‘traditional’ conference spaces and their subsequent outputs were too often unwelcoming and daunting spaces for PGRs and ECRs, especially those who are minoritised. Our team was made up of women postgraduate researchers from diverse backgrounds who led the organisation and running of the conference; including people who are racially minoritised, working class, Disabled and have caring responsibilities. As is well-established in anti-racist and anti-colonial literature about western Higher Education and academia, mainstream spaces of knowledge exchange are Euro- and white-centric, resistant to critical research that is focused on social justice, dominated by masculinised norms and extremely inaccessible to Disabled people (Hill-Collins, 1991; Small, 2012; Oliver and Morris, 2022; Smith et al., 2024; Arday, 2018). Witnessing and experiencing this ourselves, we felt compelled to create a space that was as ‘safe’ as possible for critical early career and postgraduate researchers to come together and discuss research, develop their skills and receive peer-feedback on their work.[2] We also hoped to provoke discussions around forming communities in scholar-activist research and going beyond academic institutions, thereby disrupting structural racism and other injustices that are present in academic institutions (Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly, 2021).[3]

Since the inaugural conference in 2023, we have been maintaining and forming radical friendships via social mediaand email, and holding sub-events throughout the year. Therefore, for the third annual conference we were joined by over 60 delegates from academic institutions across the UK and the world, charitable organisations, NGO’s and the NHS. Following feedback from previous years, we continued the hybrid format of the conference, to make the event accessible to attendees who would otherwise be unable to attend, due to barriers such as caring responsibilities, visa issues, financial barriers, and disabilities. Further to this, we listened to feedback from the 2024 conference which illuminated difficulties regarding the packed conference schedule and lack of informal spaces to come together, share stories, and formulate a strategy for ‘next steps’ in our scholar-activist community. We therefore designed the second conference day as slower paced and carved out space and time for delegates to come together in an informal manner, this included our ‘What Next?’ strategy workshop and writing retreat. Lastly, building on feedback from the 2023 and 2024 conference, we made the ‘PGR-led’ status of the conference more clear and unapologetic, by inviting PGRs from our community to introduce and close the conference, chair roundtables, and to join us as invited speakers. 

The conference team decided that the 2025 conference theme would be ‘Connected Struggles and Solidarity’ whilst reflecting on the proliferating, connected crisis and injustice that we were each witnessing, both within and beyond the academic space. Firstly, in the planning stages and following the conference, the team were increasingly horrified by the ongoing colonial violence, oppression, dispossession, apartheid and genocide that was, and continues to, take place in occupied Palestine, which both the UK Government and our educational institutions are complicit within. At the time of the conference, since October 2023, 62,614 Palestinian people were reported to have been murdered by the Israeli state, including many colleagues and fellow students based at Gazan Universities through Israeli Educide (Al Jazeera, 2025).  Alongside its complicity in the most documented genocide in history, the UK Government also continued the exclusionary and harmful politics of their predecessors, and their policies and discourse has further marginalized the LGBTQ community (namely our transgender siblings); made access to benefits almost impossible for many disabled people, further contributed to the racist narratives pertaining to those who arrive in the UK in small boats seeking sanctuary, and thousands more being pushed below the poverty line through continued austerity (Da Lomba, 2025; Trans Actual, 2025; Stewart, 2026; Pandya-Wood, 2025). Lastly, we witnessed other governments in the ‘Global North’ reiterate these patterns and harms- for example, under the second Trump government in the USA, which saw the further erasure of women’s rights, freedoms and liberties; harsher and deadly border politics and ICE raids, and collaborations with the genocidal ‘state’ of Israel (Kaul and Buzan, 2026; United Nations the Question of Palestine, 2025). In this context, the team therefore felt a responsibility to draw attention to this injustice and further illuminate the connected nature of our struggles against colonialism, racism, patriarchy, neoliberalism, transphobia, ableism and genocide. We believe that the only solution is collective liberation and justice for all, which demands intersectional, unrelenting, transnational solidarity (Maasri, Bergin and Bruke, 2022). 

Connecting the Working Paper to the Conference

The 2025 Working Paper embodied the varied, disruptive and interdisciplinary nature of our conference and the research included in this piece is presented through various mediums including research posters, papers, and essays. Each of our authors are based at different educational institutions across the UK and world, which we beleive reflects the diversity of our valued community. 

The conference days included contributions from researchers based at a variety of academic and non-academic institutions, each unified by their commitment to disruptive, transformative research with a particular focus on our conference themes 'Connected Struggles and Solidarity'. We are delighted to share that 19 of our Conference Delegates presented their research across 5  thematically organised panels and received constructive and supportive feedback from their peers during the Q and A segments. The 5 panels, in addition to the presented papers and authors, are detailed below: 

Panel 1: Challenging Extractive Research Practices Through Ethnographic Methods:

Patchwork ethnography: Fieldwork in fragment- Manasa Saravanan.

-       Affiliated Solidarities: Introspecting Belongingness and Difference within the tribal

communities of Northeast India situated in Bengaluru- Anisha Debbarman.

-       Collaborative research: Between sustainability and coloniality in Mexico- Omar Diaz-

Fragoso.

-       Care, Community, and Researching with: Disrupting the Neoliberalisation of Ethics in

Higher Education through an Ethics of Care Framework- Melissa Williams and Susannah

Williams.

Panel 2: Productive Struggle, Activism and Everyday Resistance

-       From justice to reparations: theoretical and empirical reflections- Priya Lukka (Online).

-       “A Proven Strong Voice” Promoting the American Black Liberation Struggle through the

lens of Ebony Magazine- Sid Ahmed Ziane (Online).

-       Sweet Home Chinatown! Chinese Bostonians and Their Campaign for Parcel C in the Mid-

1990s- Shu Wan (Online).

-       Exploring Black Girls' Experiences of Race, Racism and Misogynoir in collaboration with

Race-on-the-Agenda (ROTA)- Jamila Thompson (Online).

Panel 3: Disrupting Structural and Institutional Racism in the UK Education and

Charitable Sectors

-       The Educational Elite: British African-Caribbean PGR students lived experiences of PhD

and professional doctorates in UK higher education - Larissa Nzikeu.

-       ‘I will probably leave feeling like I never belonged at University’. How does race influence

students’ sense of belonging for women of colour at university?- Sharnel Wiggins.

-       Why it's time to let go of representation in the charity sector- Shaan Sangha.

Panel 4: Hypervisibility, Counter Narratives and Contestations

-       "Shifting Paradigms, Shifting Narratives: From Sovereignty to Solidarity for the Climate

Refugee Subject"- Irene Sacchetti (Online).

-       British Indian educational success: A Critical Race Theory counter-story to the Rishi Sunak

celebration of racial triumph- Amit Puni.

-       Examining the Prevent framework and Police led safeguarding interventions to explore

how this creates racialised vulnerability in Muslim caregivers- Natasha Carlin.

Panel 5: Disruptive Research and Methodologies

-       Challenging Eurocentric Conceptions of ‘Bias’ in Research: A Decolonial Approach to

Positionality and the Role of ‘ME’ in my Research- Chidinma Victory Oforji.

-       Nixxas in Paris: Lessons From Black Music on how to (mis)behave in the master’s house-

Laura Rennie and Macole Lannaman.

-       Faith as Resistance: The Role of Spirituality in Challenging Colonial Structures in

Academia- Maryam Bham. 

In addition to those who presented their research through paper presentations, the conference team also exhibited the visual and artistic contributions of 10 delegates in our ‘Art and Poster Exhibit’. The following posters and art pieces were exhibited at the Conference and Evening Reception. 

-       Dr Paula McLean - Conspicuous by their absence: Reclaiming the silenced voices of

black women in the Criminal Justice System – Poster

-       Gurujosh Roth - Examining the psychosocial factors that cause mental health

disorders for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the UK – Poster

-       Ziyuan Li - Visual Interruptions: Co-Design, Power, and the Uncertainties of

Representation – Poster

-       Nafesa Hamid - Access and Participation Plans in London's Higher Education

Institutions: Supporting the Academic Success and Sense of Belonging for BAME

Students Through the High Participation Systems Lens – Poster

-       Sharnel Wiggins - Decolonisation and Black Mental Health: In What Ways do Black

Students Understand Their Mental Health Under the Lens of Cultural Influences? (e.g.

stigma, religion and gender) – Poster

-       Emediong Jumbo - The Lived experiences of Black Disabled people with non-visible

disabilities in the UK: Anti- Black racism, ableism, and embodied belonging - Poster

and Scrapbook

-       Lavinia Haslam - 'She simply cannot Walk on Water' - Mixed Media

-       Susy Williams - 5 Years on From the 2020 Leicester Boohoo Scandal: Why Colonial

and Gendered Exploitation in Fast Fashion Manufacturing in the UK Persists Despite

Attempts to Address It – Poster

-       York Palestine Encampment - Art Pieces, Poetry, Placards and Zines

-       Melissa Williams - ‘Borders’ (2025) and ‘Love Letter to the Windrush Generation’

(2023) – Poetry

We are delighted that four of our presenting delegates have accepted our invitation to share their work in our 2026 Working Paper and want to express our gratitude and deep admiration for their commitment to socially engaged, liberatory and disruptive research. To conclude this introduction, we have summarised each contribution below. 

Summaries of the Work Included in this Working Paper

This working paper, the ‘Race’ and Socially Engaged Research Working Paper 2026 (Volume 3), is a collection of contributions from a conference held in York in June 2025. Below are summaries of the papers and research contributions included:

The first contribution from Emediong Jumbo is entitled ‘Lived Experiences of Black Disabled People with Non-visible Disabilities in the UK’ based on doctoral research. Jumbo explores the intersections of anti-Black racism, ableism, and belonging and emphasises fair compensation for participants based on principles of disability justice and Black feminist thought, using methods like photo-elicitation to engage with people with multiple positionalities and marginalisations.

The second piece is written by Irene Sachetti entitled ‘Connected through Water, Displaced by Water: Vulnerabilities, Identities, and Habitability in the Kinocene’. In this paper, Sachetti draws upon poetry created by Indigenous Pacific Islanders and Greenlanders to illuminate the various ways that water both connects and displaces communities. The paper is framed within the Kinocene- an era characterised by entangled ecological and human mobility, to provoke a reimagining of movement, identity and protection through the connective force of water. 

Thirdly, the next contribution to the working paper is written by Chidinma Victory Oforji, entitled ‘Challenging Eurocentric Conceptions of Bias in Research: A Poetic Inquiry. This work uses autoethnographic poetic inquiry to challenge Eurocentric academic standards of "objectivity" and "neutrality". Drawing on the frameworks of Sankofa(ancestral wisdom) and Racecraft, she repositions lived experience—specifically as a Nigerian-born nurse and educator—not as a bias, but as a valid source of epistemic power and resistance.

Reflections on Presenting Social Justice Driven Research at the York Family Fringe Festival reflects on a public engagement activity titled "What Goes Into Making Your Clothes and What Does It Cost?". Shares resources for others to use and discusses the importance of engaging children and families with social justice topics like globalisation, exploitation, and inequality early in life.

[1] ‘PGR’ stands for postgraduate researcher and ‘ECR’ means early career researcher.

[2] By ‘safe’, we mean that our organising team were conscious that the topics discussed at the conference were often sensitive and could have adversely impacted attendees in different ways. We also recognised that everyone experiences safety differently and we could not guarantee that the event spaces would be ‘safe’, since we cannot control all of the factors that impact this. We therefore created a statement on safety to acknowledge both our unavoidable complicity in harmful structures that are perpetuated in academic contexts and our inability to guarantee a wholly ‘safe space’. As a conference team, we put in place several measures to enhance the safety of our space including access to decompression, rest and joy spaces; Q&A moderation; and other support for delegates.

It is also important to note that we do not understand ‘safe’ academic spaces to mean those where thoughts and ideas are unchallenged and everybody agrees. Indeed, the opposite is true. We sought to create a space where peers felt they could discuss, debate and critique in good faith and with understanding, respect and openness from others.

[3] To find out more about why we created this annual conference, please see Williams and Williams (2024).

References

Al Jazeera. (2025). Death Toll in Israel’s War on Gaza Surpasses 60,000. Al Jazeera. [Online]. 29 July 2025. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/29/death-toll-in-israels-war-on-gaza-surpasses-60000[Accessed 1 June 2026]. 

Arday, J. (2018). Dismantling power and privilege through reflexivity: negotiating normative Whiteness, the Eurocentric curriculum and racial micro-aggressions within the Academy. Whiteness and Education, 3(2), pp. 141-161. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/23793406.2019.1574211. [Accessed 2 January 2025].

Bos, A.L., Sweet-Cushman, J. and Schneider, M.C. (2019). Family-Friendly Academic Conferences: a missing link to fix the ‘leaky pipeline’? Politics, Groups and Identities, 7(3), pp. 748-758. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1403936. [Accessed 20 December 2025]. 

Brasher, J.P. (2020). Positionality and participatory ethics in the Global South: critical reflections on and lessons learned from fieldwork failure. Journal of Cultural Geography, 37(03), pp. 296-310. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/08873631.2020.1760020. [Accessed 15 January 2025].

Bustamante, A. and Rata, M. (2022). No visa, No worries! Making global health conferences accessible for all. BMJ GH Blogs, 27 September 2022. [Online]. Available at: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjgh/2022/09/27/no-visa-no-worries-making-global-health-conferences-accessible-for-all/. [Accessed 20 December 2024]. 

Calvey, D. (2018). The Fear and Fascination of a Methodological Pariah. In R. Iphofen and M. Tolich (Eds.). SAGE Research Methods: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 470-484.

Chatterjee, D. (2022). How international conferences fail scholars from the global South. International Affairs, 5 August 2022. [Online]. Available at: https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/how-international-conferences-fail-scholars-from-the-global-south-fbde14e5d1f1. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Cheng, Y., Yang, P., Lee, J., Waters, J., & Yeoh, B. S. A. (2023). Migration governance and higher education during a pandemic: policy (mis)alignments and international postgraduate students’ experiences in Singapore and the UK. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 50(5), pp. 1138–1156. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2023.2279731. [Accessed 15 January 2025].

Code, L. (1995). Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations. New York: Routledge.

Cohen, D. and Crabtree, B. (2006). Qualitative research guidelines project. [Online]. Available at:http://www.qualres.org/HomeEval-3664.html. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Da Lomba, S. (2025). The Rwanda Scheme is Dead. Long Live Hostility. 3 February 2025. Border Criminologies. [Online]. Available at: https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-criminologies-blog/blog-post/2025/02/rwanda-scheme-dead-long-live-hostility [Accessed 15 January 2025]. 

Doucet, A. (2018). Feminist Epistemologies and Ethics: Ecological Thinking, Situated Knowledges, Epistemic Responsibilities. In R. Iphofen and M. Tolich (Eds.). SAGE Research Methods: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 73-87.

Ebrahimi, O.V. (2022a). Sidelined by bureaucracy. Science, 378(6622), pp. 922-922.

Ebrahimi, O.V. (2022b). Visa bureaucracy makes scientific conferences inaccessible for too many researchers. Science Adviser, 23 November 2022. [Online]. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.caredit.adf9304. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Gould, C. (2007). Transnational Solidarities. Journal of Social Philosophy, 38(1). [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2007.00371.x [Accessed 1 January 2026]. 

Hammersley, M. (2018). Values in Social Research. In R. Iphofen and M. Tolich (Eds.). SAGE Research Methods: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 23-34.

Haraway, D.J. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©Meets_Oncomouse™: Feminism and Technoscience (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Hill-Collins, P. (1991). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. London and New York: 1991.

Iphofen, R. and Tolich, M. (2018). Concluding Thoughts: The Virtues of a Reflexive Qualitative Researcher. In R. Iphofen and M. Tolich (Eds.). SAGE Research Methods: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics.London: SAGE Publications, pp. 540-541.

Joseph-Salisbury, R. and Connelly, L. (2021). Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism. Manchester University Press: Manchester.

Kaul, N. Buzan, B. (2026). Trump’s New America and the Question of Fascism. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481261418500 [Accessed 20 February 2026]. 

Leeming, J. (2024). UK universities on the brink. Nature, 633, pp. 969-971. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03079-w. [Accessed 15 January 2025].

Maasri, Z, Bergin, C. Burke, F. (2022). Transnational Solidarity: Anticolonialism in the global sixties. Manchester University Press: Manchester. 

McClurg, U.L. (2024). Conference accessibility should be a universal concern. Nature Cell Biology, 26, p. 309. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-024-01346-6. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Moosavi, M. (2024). To Catch a Glimpse from Afar: MENA Scholars in US International Conferences. Theatre Topics, 34(1), pp. 95-101. [Online]. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tt.2024.a920481. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Núnez Chicharro, M., Mangena, M., Alonso Carrillo, M.I. and Priego De La Cruz, A.M. (2024). The effects of stakeholder power, strategic posture and slack financial resources on sustainability performance in UK higher education institutions. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, 15(1), pp. 171-206. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-07-2022-0375. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Oliver, C. and Morris, A. (2020). (dis-)Belonging bodies: Negotiating outsider-ness at academic conferences. Gender, Place and Culture, 27(6), pp. 765-787. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1609913. [Accessed 2 January 2025]. 

Oliver, C. and Morris, A. (2022) ‘Resisting the “academic circle jerk”: precarity and friendship at academic conferences in UK higher education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43(4), pp. 603–622. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2042193. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Pandya-Wood, J. (2025). Austerity UK: The Ongoing Cruelty of Welfare Reform. 30 July 2025. Transforming Society. [Online]. Available at: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2025/07/30/austerity-uk-the-ongoing-cruelty-of-welfare-reform/ [Accessed: 5 February 2026]. 

Rollock, N. (2012). Unspoken Rules of Engagement: Navigating Racial Microaggressions in the Academic Terrain. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(5), pp. 517-532. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2010.543433. [Accessed 11 December 2024]. 

Sarpong, J. and Adelekan, T. (2024). Globalisation and education equity: The impact of neoliberalism on universities’ mission. Policy Futures in Education, 22(6), pp. 1114-1129. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103231184657. [Accessed 15 January 2025].

Shaw, A. (2021). Inclusion of disabled Higher Education students: why are we not there yet?’. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 28(6), pp. 820–838. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2021.1968514. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Small, S. (2012). Slavery, Colonialism and their Legacy in the Eurocentric University. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 10(1), pp. 69-80.

Smith, A., Persaud, A., Bhugra, D., Javed, A. and Liebrenz, M. (2024). Restrictive visa policies harm global scientific exchanges. The Lancet, 403(10442), p. 2376. [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00300-3. [Accessed 14 January 2025].

Stewart, M. (2026). The Law of Unintended Consequences. Disability Rights UK. [Online]. Available at: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/law-unintended-consequences-–-new-report-mo-stewart-february-2026[Accessed: 5 February 2026]. 

Trans Actual. (2025). Trans Lives 2025: Continuing to endure the UK’s Hostile Environment. Trans Actual. [Online]. Available at: https://transactual.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/TransActual-Trans-Lives-2025.pdf [Accessed: 5 February 2026]. 

Williams, M. and Williams, S.G. (2024). Introduction and Background. ‘Race’ and Socially Engaged Research Working Paper 2023: Contributions from inaugural conference held in York. Volume 1, pp. 5-16,https://sites.google.com/view/raceandsociallyengagedresearch/publications/working-paper/2024-volume-1.

United Nations The Question of Palestine. (2025). Report: “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime” by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. A/80/492. Geneva: United Nations. Available at: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/special-rapporteur-report-gaza-genocide-a-collective-crime-20oct25/ [Accessed 15 January 2026]. 

How to cite this introduction: Williams, M. and Williams, S.G. (2025). Introduction and Background: Connected Struggles and Solidarities. ‘Race’and Socially Engaged Research Working Paper 2025: Contributions from third conference held in York. Volume 3, pp. XXX, https://sites.google.com/view/raceandsociallyengagedresearch/publications/working-paper/2026-volume-3/introduction.