The problem of race positionality and research funding
Dr Prakash Shah has penned an article for The Critic arguing that the racial identity of the researcher should not affect their progress in higher education.
In his article, Dr Shah, Reader in Culture and Law at Queen Mary University of London, explores the issue of white European researchers being required to address their “positionality” in funding applications for research on non-Western subjects.
He argues that such questions are anti-intellectual, and creates a caste system, with the likelihood of scrutiny increasing the higher up one stands in the system. He says: “I cannot imagine that as a non-white researcher anybody would have argued that my positionality would impede my ability to research the situation of British immigrants in Turkey, for which I won two small grants.”
Read the full article in The Critic.