Exploring the Politics of International Research Through Fiction

Exploring the Politics of International Research through Fiction with Aisha Phoenix
This session explores my speculative fiction short story that features in Glimpse: an Anthology of Black British Speculative Fiction. “Bat Monkey” is about a Black British Nigerian scholar who grows increasingly uncomfortable with the ethics of a research project of which he is part. The project seeks to discover a new species, the bat monkey, in an unnamed low-income sub-Saharan African country. In the session, I will bring the story together with literature on the politics of international research and the inherent power dynamics at play when scholars with generous research grants travel to countries with high levels of deprivation to conduct their research. Drawing on extracts from the story, I will consider how the politics of research funding affect the dynamics of international research projects. In keeping with this, I will use the story to examine how local and international researchers/scholars can have conflicting research agendas. I will consider issues to do with leadership, who gets to lead particular projects and the hierarchies established within particular projects. Issues related to research ethics will be explored throughout.
Biography
Aisha Phoenix is a Lecturer in Social Justice at King’s College London, UK, and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow researching ‘Understanding Colourism Among Young People in the UK’. Dr Phoenix’s research interests focus primarily on racialised identities and belonging and issues related to social justice, including colourism and anti-Muslim racism. She is a co-author of Islam on Campus: contested identities and the cultures of higher education in Britain. She is also a speculative fiction writer who has published a number of stories.