Being a Minoritized Early Career Researcher in Political Psychology
For the ISPP ECC virtual event titled “Minoritized Early Career Researchers’ Perspectives and Experiences in Political Psychology,” one moderator and three panelists — all Early Career Researchers (ECRs) with intersectional minoritized identities — came together to discuss their experiences in academia, the barriers they face, and future projections to make political psychology a more inclusive field. This blog post summarizes the discussion from the event held on May 8, 2024.
Navigating academia as a minoritized early career researcher (ECR) in political psychology reveals a deeply politicised existence. Our intersecting identities (e.g., being openly queer, people of colour (PoC), neurodivergent, etc.) significantly shape how we are treated and perceived. Despite holding some power as scholars, our status as ECRs emphasises our marginalization, complicating our research and presence in an academic space marked by varying levels of privilege and power. Being visibly minoritized (e.g., PoC or disabled) further politicizes our position. Additionally, being first-generation academics in Europe or America or being based in a Global South university adds another layer to our minoritized experience, making our very existence and expression in academia a political act, as we have to show our expertise and validate our existence in this power system daily. The current political climate, marked by xenophobia, white supremacy, and anti-immigration, exacerbates these challenges and makes our existence, scholarship, and actions politicized as our presence in academia and the world at large are continually questioned.
Growing up in economically and politically unstable environments or being marginalized from an early age instilled in us the belief that education could improve our lives and those of others. We saw academia as a saviour that could provide the material, intellectual, and political tools needed for desired social change towards more acceptance of people like us in privileged spaces. However, academia is far from the progressive haven it is often portrayed to be. The same reasons that made us see academia as a saviour also created constraints such as social and financial hardships, prolonging the start of our academic journey, and degree attainment. The intersection of these fundamental hardships with the precarious positions we occupy in academia reveals a significant gap between the theoretical commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion and their practical implementation. These lived experiences emphasised the urgent need to address and dismantle these barriers and power structures.
Our journey into researching minoritized groups began with a belief in the importance of diversity. However, our perspective has evolved with our experiences as minoritized ECRs, leading us to understand that researching minoritized groups isn’t just about diversity; it’s about rethinking our approach to research itself. We must question our foundational assumptions and methods to ensure they don’t inadvertently perpetuate existing power structures. Intersectional approaches are crucial in this rethinking process. By examining the intersections of various identities, we can systematically uncover and challenge the assumptions embedded in our discipline.
As minoritized researchers, we often expected to excel in established, less contentious areas to gain the credibility needed to pursue innovative, community-focused research. Diversifying the academic pipeline and conducting what we call “water is wet” research — validating what minoritized communities already know and experience — are key motivations for our work. Empirical evidence is necessary to substantiate lived experiences and influence policy and decision-making effectively. Political psychology still holds significant gaps, particularly in addressing intersectional differences and the “unknown of wet water.” Many foundational concepts in political psychology remain underexplored across different groups (i.e., the majority of the world). Addressing these gaps is essential for building robust, inclusive scientific knowledge production.
Living in a time where politics is forced upon you and your existence has also shaped our understanding of minoritized groups. Witnessing ongoing protests and social movements firsthand has highlighted the importance of recognizing the agency and knowledge within these communities. Rather than speaking for minoritized groups, we aim to amplify their voices and learn from their experiences. Researching minoritized groups requires constant ethical reflection. It’s crucial to ensure that our work benefits these communities and does not reinforce existing injustices and power structures. It is essential to acknowledge that most research on inequality and minoritisation has been conducted by beneficiaries of the systems that produce inequality and minoritisation. Therefore, the political biases of researchers while conducting these studies should not be ignored but systematically examined and recognized. Addressing these biases is essential for fostering a more equitable and inclusive academic environment by deconstructing what is seen as neutral, scientific, or a priori and showing that power structures are embedded in knowledge production. Conducting research on minoritized groups in political psychology demands a critical, intersectional approach that challenges existing power structures and amplifies marginalized voices. It’s about rethinking our methods, validating lived experiences, and ensuring our work contributes to social justice and equity.
The struggles faced by minoritized ECRs often originate from various mechanisms, including other researchers, institutions, and the dominant knowledge production systems in academia. These structures and incentives create significant challenges. For instance, we all, in varying ways and levels, have experienced a high degree of objectification, being frequently used for our expertise in “authentic” contexts and perceived as data collectors for privileged senior researchers who have no access to these contexts, making us feel like accessories rather than valued collaborators. Especially scholars from the Global South are often seen as a source of data and not valued for their substantive or methodological contributions. They are, often explicitly, considered as accessories to the research ideas of the Global North. This lack of recognition of their potential contributions and an enduring perception forces them to publish in lower-ranked, area-specific journals, limiting their recognition and career progression. We also encounter derogatory classifications in research in cross-cultural research, often marked with problematic and binary Western-oriented categorisation of the world, experiences, and emotions. When we try to highlight these issues, we are labelled as problem-makers: the hierarchical nature of academia further penalises us for disclosing our neurodiversity, PoC, or queer identities, making salient our marginalization.
The handling of political and social crises by major academic organizations, such as genocides, wars, and conflicts, has further exposed moral shortcomings within the field of political psychology. The lack of decisive action and the tendency to adopt a so-called “neutral” approach have disillusioned many scholars, particularly minoritised ECRs. This issue highlights a broader moral, political, and generational gap within the field, with established academics with a privileged position and power of impact in academia often failing to adequately address or understand the perspectives and needs of younger, minoritized — and in turn politicized — researchers.
The legitimized narrative in political psychology restricts space for diverse research outputs. Convincing others that race, gender, class, and neurodiversity are universal issues, rather than niche areas, is particularly challenging. To dismantle power structures and hierarchies within academia, particularly for minoritized ECRs, we must recognize the systemic and everyday challenges we face and the actionable changes needed at both the systemic level and daily research practices. Academia often views minoritized ECRs as mere cogs in the machine, expecting them to fit predefined roles rather than valuing their unique expertise. This is particularly challenging for neurodiverse individuals who find the expectation to conform and the lack of genuine support alienating. The system’s tendency to replace those who don’t fit the mould exacerbates this issue, contributing to high attrition rates among marginalized scholars.
We’ve often faced financial and logistical barriers in attending international conferences. These challenges included visa delays, high costs for virtual presentations, and a lack of accommodation for low-income researchers from the Global South. Despite the academic community’s professed commitment to diversity, these scholars often encounter conditional support and red tape. The hierarchical and exclusionary nature of academic conferences and institutions marginalizes scholars from the Global South and those with limited financial resources. We want to emphasize the need for more inclusive and democratized avenues for recognition and collaboration. Social media and horizontal networking among peers serve as effective alternatives to traditional, hierarchical networking methods like conferences. Nonetheless, the power of collective action and communal support is essential for overcoming these barriers and shifting away from reliance on traditional academic structures of conferences towards more inclusive practices.
Community building emerges as a vital strategy for survival and success in academia for minoritized ECRs. Finding and nurturing a supportive network — whether through professional associations, annual conferences or communities centred around minoritized ECRs’ experiences and perspectives — provides essential emotional and professional support. These communities offer recognition and a sense of belonging that institutional structures often fail to provide.
In conclusion, while there are isolated examples of good practice, systemic change is required to dismantle the entrenched system of academic hierarchies and power structures. A path forward includes adopting more inclusive and context-sensitive review processes, providing genuine support for minoritized ECRs, fostering strong community networks, and addressing the moral failings within the discipline. Only through such comprehensive changes can we create a more equitable and supportive academic environment for all.
Link of the event: https://youtu.be/9ywi-SKLj64
About the authors
Mete Sefa Uysal is an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Exeter. He is currently serving as the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Global Environmental Psychology and as the professional development coordinator at the ISPP Early Career Committee. His research specialises in collective action and protests, crowd behaviours and social movements, political leadership and followership, intergroup relations, conflict, violence, and solidarity.
Flavio Azevedo is an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at Utrecht University. His research primarily focuses on (1) the political psychology of ideological attitudes and their psychological underpinnings; and (2) integrating open science into higher education. Flavio co-founded and directs FORRT — A Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (forrt.org).
Jamie Chan is an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Brighton. Jamie is interested in how power structures on a societal level interact with people’s behaviours on an individual level, with a particular interest in how people navigate their bodies and appearance.
Sa-kiera Hudson completed her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Harvard University in 2020 and is currently an assistant professor at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Her research focuses on the formation, maintenance, and intersections of social hierarchies. She investigates the psychological roots of power hierarchies and how they intersect to influence experience and perception.
Aritra Mukherjee is a researcher at the University of Delhi studying collective resilience and collective victimhood among various victimized groups in India and post-colonial legacies. He mostly focuses on using creative qualitative methods to tap into the voices of resistance and resilience.
