Ahmad, Fauzia. 2025. Between Invisibility and Hypervisibility: Reflections on being ‘Permanently Precarious’ as a British Muslim Woman within the Ivory Towers of academia. In: Arif Mahmud and Maisha Islam, eds. Uncovering Islamophobia in Higher Education: Supporting the Success of Muslim Students and Staff. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031652523 [Book Section] (In Press)

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Abstract or Description

This chapter adopts an autoethnographic and intersectional perspective in order to critically examine the ways British Muslim women academics are positioned within the academy and the everyday challenges, and macro and micro-aggressions, faced while being an ‘outed’ Muslim woman academic working within UK higher education. Situating myself as a ‘permanently precarious’ Muslim woman academic, and employing a lens of ‘lateness’, I trace how long-term precarity over a 30 year period is representative of the institutionalised racism, Islamophobia, Othering and marginalisation experienced by Muslim women academics and academics of colour, and highlight the impacts these have on our sense of belonging, confidence and ability to thrive within the sector. I argue that despite several reports on the racism and Islamophobia experienced by students and staff from Muslim backgrounds, there remains a culture of exclusion that universities need to do more to address. While hiring practices within universities may claim to welcome candidates from diverse backgrounds, I chart how wider research instead, documents institutionalised, gendered, racialised and anti-Muslim discriminatory hiring practices across the academy, and highlight the ways these are experienced at a personal level. For those of us working within the niche field of ‘Muslim studies’, I argue that such practices act to further, and routinely undermine ‘our’ expertise on our communities while maintaining the authority of the Western, non-Muslim academic gaze to determine what is worthy of research, and who is worthy of recognition.

Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	Muslims; Islamophobia; racism; precarity; higher education; autoethnography; Muslim women academics
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Sociology
Dates:	Date Event 2024 Accepted 7 January 2025 Published
Item ID:	37161
Date Deposited:	20 Jun 2024 09:35
Last Modified:	02 Dec 2024 10:48
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37161

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