Racialized Researchers and Students in Academia: Narratives of Struggle, Resistance, Transformation, and Resilience

Abstract

This thesis explores the everyday experiences of racialized researchers and students as they navigate and resist whiteness in academia. Using semi-structured interviews, this thesis centers the lived experiences of racialized researchers and students to examine how participants experience exclusion, censorship, and surveillance through institutional norms and practices that produce and reproduce whiteness, affecting their ability to belong and produce knowledge in academia. Grounded in Critical Race Theory, the analysis draws on multiple theoretical frameworks to illustrate how participants navigate, adapt, contest, and challenge whiteness to survive within these spaces. Rather than positioning participants solely as victims of systemic exclusion, this research project foregrounds their resistance, agency, and the knowledge they carry from their communities.