by Dounia BOURABAIN, Lecturer and post-doctoral researcher at the School of Social Sciences, UHasselt

The shiny image of academia as a place of excellence, merit, and equality has been challenged by critical scholars who describe the university as being in crisis. For this lecture I will present my work on the crisis of sexism and racism in Belgian academia from the perspective of white and racialized women working as early-career researchers. Specifically, I will discuss how women academics experience and respond to everyday racism-sexism at their university. Not only does Belgian academia underperform other European countries in terms of racial and gender equality and diversity amongst faculty, but the urgency of this issue has been demonstrated again in recent public cases of sexual and racial harassment across universities. From a sociological race and postcolonial perspective, I theorize Belgian universities as ‘neoliberal diversity complexes’ to understand which dynamics are at play that normalize, conceal, and (re)produce everyday sexism and racism.

Dounia Bourabain is a lecturer and post-doctoral researcher at the School of Social Sciences of Hasselt University. She defended her PhD in sociology in 2022 titled ‘Everyday Racism and Sexism in the Ivory Tower. The Struggles and Resistance of Women Early Career Researchers in Belgium’. Her work has been published in Gender, Work and Organization; the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; the DuBois Review; Race, Ethnicity and Education; and Higher Education Policy among others. She is associate editor of the race and ethnicity section of Sociology Compass and editorial member of the Journal of Gender Studies. She is a Fulbright scholar and has been a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge. She also serves as advisor to the Belgian federal evaluation committee on anti-discrimination law and other Belgian anti-discrimination organizations.

Tuesday 7 March from 3:30 to 5:30 pm

Salle de réception
Bâtiment DE1 – Niveau 3 – R3.105
Avenue Antoine Depage 1
1000 Bruxelles

Registration here