Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education

This paper explores the perceptions of future career trajectories amongst racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Drawing on 22 semi-structured interviews, my findings discuss how racialised minority PhDs relate to an academic career trajectory and identity, how they experience white organisational spaces and how diversity, or lack thereof, affects their career choices and imagined futures. These new empirical insights reveal some of the complex ways racialised intersectional identities shape career planning. This paper encourages institutions to move from just increasing diversity to implementing more cultural and structural changes that value intersectional identities and academic knowledge.