UnBecoming of Academia: Reflexively Resisting Imposterism Through Poetic Praxis as Black Women in UK Higher Education Institutions

Engaging in a creative reflection of the lived experience of two Black women early career academics, this chapter explores ‘spaces of solidarity’ as intimate resistance of imposterism in emerging academic careers and the lived reflexive praxis of Black women stepping into a ‘male, pale, and stale’ academic landscape—a landscape weaponised to devalue and stigmatise ‘otherness’. Embracing an autoethnographic, creative praxis, this chapter builds upon studies of Black women’s oppressive encounters in academia and proposes the use of co-creative reflexivity as a method of resistance to the dominance of imposterism within the academy. Overall, this work contributes to understandings around the everyday, (in)visible experiences of oppression encountered in academic contexts in Britain.