Building Capacity for Collective Possibilities: Reimagining Research Teams in Higher Education

ABSTRACT

Grounding our work in shared commitments to community care, our collective of racially minoritized higher education scholars aims to resist the often overly competitive and isolating nature of research teams in graduate education. Our commitments to community care are also in opposition to a hyperfocus on productivity as a measure of success in the academy. In this collaborative autoethnography, we reflected upon and made meaning of our experiences as a research team of racially minoritized scholars at a predominantly white institution who are striving to enact our commitments to community care. Using socialization and the theory of refusal as guiding frameworks, we identified three concepts that were vital to our efforts as a team: (a) holding space for racialization and resistance, (b) deliberate centering of the collective learning process and co-construction of knowledge, and (c) acknowledging the tension between production pressures and maintaining relationships. Our findings highlight how research teams can serve as sites of connection, refusal, and resistance for racially minoritized scholars in higher education. By committing to mutuality and our humanity, we also illustrate how research teams can be used to imagine and create new futures in the academy.

KEYWORDS:

• Graduate education
• socialization
• refusal
• research teams
• ideal worker

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Kati Lebioda, Liz Jones, Judy Kim, and Laura Lee Smith for the gift of their presence and partnership as new and former members of our research team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).