A collective book with scholars and postgraduate students from the global south

The book project

The different paths of transnational academics from the global south

This book centers the stories of transnational early-career non-elite scholars from the Global South who started their postgraduate studies as adult immigrants and international students.

We use the term "transnational academics” instead of "international academics" to acknowledge that academics and students who have crossed national borders correspond to a larger and more heterogeneous group of individuals than people holding visas for academic purposes. Refugees, undocumented, and immigrant postgraduate students are also transnational academics. Global South does not only allude to a geographic location but a geopolitical and sociocultural position that encompasses the lands and peoples who have suffered the greatest costs of colonization and global economic integration. 

Treasuring all knowledges

The proposed book seeks to be a source of information and inspiration for transnational academics who are non-elite scholars from the Global South and may feel less welcomed in traditional Western academia.  Its content comprises letters, essays, poems, and drawings, written by transnational scholars from the Global South who started their academic careers as immigrant adults and or international students. Drawing from Indigenous epistemologies and Women of Colour feminism, the book addresses two questions: 1) what knowledges brought from home allowed us to navigate academia, and 2) what knowledges did we wish to have known before starting our academic journeys. 

A collective book project 

Inspired by and rooted Indigenous epistemologies (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008) and Women of Colour feminism (Anzaldua & Moraga, 1981; Lorde, 1984, Mohanty & Carty, 2018), the two main authors -- each transnational scholar from the global south -- engage in conversation about the knowledges brought from their homes that helped them to survive the postgraduate studies in a foreign country and the knowledges they wished they had known before entering the academic career. In addition, an important part of the book will emerge from workshops and dialogues facilitated by the authors with other postgraduate students and early-career academics from the Global South.  Thus, the proposed book will configure a body of collective knowledge whose main goal is to serve as a source of information and inspiration for transnational early-career scholars, especially postgraduate students, whose sociocultural backgrounds and identities are not fully recognized by the traditional Western–European modes of academia.  

Interested in participating in the process of writing

Email us at transnationalacademics@gmail.com