21. ‘Who Deserves a Chair?’

In this chapter, the author reflects on the performative work that academics do in conference rooms and other spaces of academic performance. The chapter investigates the stark and sometimes harsh differences between research and (self)presentation performances and what happens in more private spaces by using an autobiographic approach. The chapter recounts a narrative based on the author’s experience with microaggressions as a visibly non-white and non-European woman researcher in conference spaces in the Global North. The narrative revolves around multiple experiences of everyday microaggressions and how (a sense of) belonging, and the allocation of time, space, and objects in institutional spaces of performance as its extension is often reserved for those who are considered insiders and ‘kins,’ namely white and mostly Western European academics.