Disrupting Dehumanizing Norms of the Academy: A Model for Conducting Research in a Collective Space

Academic research and knowledge production are frequently pervaded by elitism (Torres-Olave et al., 2019), epistemic exclusion (Dotson, 2014; Settles et al., 2020), and racialization (Ray, 2019; Thelin, 2019; Wilder, 2013). These discriminatory, exclusionary, and biased systems delegitimize the work of minoritized scholars, stifle innovation, and deter progress toward less violent processes to engage in knowledge production. Literature documenting innovative efforts to advance these commitments is scarce (Creamer, 2004), further underscoring the need and urgency for additional research examining how scholars incorporate and center equitable approaches in knowledge production in the Academy. As such, the central purpose of this qualitative autoethnographic study is to examine our experiences as minoritized scholars who center equity in the U.S. South; a secondary purpose of this work is to document the confluence of place, counterspace creation, and linkages between humanization and scholarly knowledge production. This research revealed our different yet shared negative socialization experiences in the Academy and, centrally, how our research collective diverges from traditionalist and power-imbalanced collaborative research. We foreground how we purposefully elect to humanize our fellow co-researchers, support each other’s learning and growth, and prioritize healing for ourselves as scholars with minoritized identities and transformation of the social inequities that permeate higher education. Based on our findings, we present a conceptual model of our research collective as a counterspace (Ong et al., 2018) to de facto scholarly socialization and dehumanization within the Academy.