In today’s globalised and competitive world of academia, old and emerging divisions and hierarchies have made producing knowledge ethically and collaboratively a serious challenge.
In early 2019, the Antipode academic journal published an article entitled “Subcontracting Academia: Alienation, Exploitation and Disillusionment in the UK Overseas Syrian Refugee Research Industry”.
The authors, Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock from the University of London, analysed a UK-funded research project on refugees in Lebanon which, inter alia, aimed at building global partnerships and local capacity. In the article, they highlighted how, for the Lebanese research assistants involved in the study, these goals engendered drastically different outcomes, resulting in “alienation from research projects, sense of exploitation during the research process, and disillusionment with the UK university research sector”.
