The Demystifying Academia development programme

Standard university frameworks often operate under the assumption of a level playing field. 

However, for global majority* postdocs, the reality is defined by systemic barriers that traditional institutional structures often overlook. 

To ensure all researchers thrive, progress and lead, it is important to make ambiguous academic career paths a lot clearer.

Led by Dr Karisha George, the Demystifying Academia project has been commissioned by the White Rose University Consortium to address this challenge directly.

This development programme is currently recruiting participants. Find out more and apply here.

By identifying gaps in best practice across partner institutions and the wider sector and exploring current global majority experiences within academia, the project is creating and piloting a tailored development programme to empower global majority postdocs to navigate and reshape academia. 

This initiative hopes to equip global majority postdocs with the tools and clarity needed to confidently progress their careers within higher education.

The research findings upon which the Demystifying Academia programme is based emerge partly from focus groups and interviews co-led by Dr Karisha George and Raj Mann. 

Findings from the focus groups

Participants were asked about structural, emotional, cultural, and practical obstacles and enablers regarding their perceived likelihood of obtaining a professorship compared to non-global majority colleagues. The findings presented below offer perspective, realism and practical insight into the experiences of global majority postdocs. 

The following information represents the personal experiences and perspectives of individual focus group participants, and others may experience academic careers differently. 

All identifying information has been removed.

Thematic analysis revealed three main core areas of tension.

Theme 1: Developing a research niche

Participants associated the professorship role with prestige and socially impactful applied research. However, they felt intense pressure and structural disadvantages when trying to build competitive research profiles.

• Participants reported difficulty breaking into informal professional networks, experiencing explicit exclusion during informal discussions or receiving backhanded, racialised comments at research conferences.
• Concerns extended to managing student interactions, with participants expressing insecurity over how their accents were perceived or fearing racism from students without knowing where to seek institutional support.
• Participants felt the pressure to work twice as hard as white peers to achieve the same promotions. This was compounded by opaque, vague promotion criteria, leaving them to guess their readiness.
• While white counterparts utilised established networks, global majority researchers struggled to access effective mentorship to help them intentionally navigate the hidden rules of advancement or the instability of moving between short-term postdoctoral contracts.

“Academia also progresses based on relationships. What happens if there are biases in these relationships? I often get backhanded compliments, and I need to manage my composure, appearance and deference to people in the field even after these comments. It is all very racialised”

 

“Professorship enables me to contribute to the field, but there are institutional differences in what this entails. I also need to worry about my accent, financial pressures, networking and developing these networks when I think about becoming a Professor”

Theme 2: Finding meaning in academia

Participants yearned to use their lived experiences to inform field research but struggled to find long-term meaning and authenticity within institutional structures.

• Participants faced difficulty in how to maximise their research impact within restrictive institutional ethics protocols, which ignored the realities of community-based implementation.
• Researchers exploring racial themes faced condescension, with their scholarship dismissed as ‘passion projects’ or siloed, limiting their recognised impact on the wider discipline. Conversely, they felt institutional pressure to disproportionately lead or participate in every departmental Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) initiative.
• A pervasive culture of constant stress, short deadlines, and external funding pressures created environments where personal value felt entirely contingent on continuous output. Missing a single deadline resulted in sudden, exclusionary shifts in team dynamics.
• Due to a lack of visible representation and shared career journeys, many viewed a professorship as unsustainable and unattainable, leaving them to contemplate eventually working part-time or exiting academia entirely.

“Researchers navigate the lack of representation, but we need to acknowledge the importance of diversity to research quality – you need to be able to have conversations that help navigate these hidden rules and regulations”

 

“There is a Westernised professional way of being, e.g. showing up in a certain way, speaking in a certain way. There is no space for being your authentic self without repercussions, so how do I become proud of myself and what I can add?”

Theme 3: Navigating the hidden curriculum

The focus groups highlighted significant challenges regarding the unspoken rules of higher education advancement.

• Participants noted a high volume of unwritten institutional expectations, making it difficult to read professional situations or understand external industry engagement.
• International assumptions based entirely on appearance or accent hindered professional relationships. Participants generally avoided critical career-building conversations with line managers (e.g., authorship, promotions, or paper rejections) out of isolation and fear of appearing incompetent.
• Rather than identifying with standard imposter syndrome, participants experienced pressures related to being perceived as a token hire. This forced them to work harder to prove they belonged.
• Participants carried a heavy emotional burden from wider societal microaggressions and racism encountered outside the university or during overseas fieldwork. Institutional cultures often dismissed these vulnerabilities, forcing global majority ECRs to silently internalise mental health strains to avoid being viewed as failures.

“As a Black woman you do not want to be seen as a failure, so you silently go through all these additional pressures that put ever-increasing strain on your mental health”

“Moving as global majority researchers around the world for conferences is not an easy experience. There is discrimination around travel which is ignored”

Bridging the gap

The Demystifying Academia project exists to dismantle these specific barriers. 

By using this firsthand data to design a targeted development programme, the White Rose University Consortium hopes to bridge the gap between entry-level doctoral access and diverse senior leadership, equipping global majority researchers with the tools, networks, and clarity that they need to claim their rightful space in higher education.

The development programme is currently recruiting participants. Find out more and apply here.

*Note on Terminology: The White Rose University Consortium recognises that individuals use different terms to represent themselves. The Equity in Leadership Programme team asked participants to vote on the term that best represented them. ‘Global majorities’ received the most votes, providing a positive perspective compared to the narrative of “minority groups.”