- Date: 13.05.2025, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (including breaks)
Academia is deeply intertwined with power structures and discrimination, shaping not only institutional cultures and career trajectories but also research theory and methodologies. This interactive workshop will critically examine these dynamics, discussing how academia as a workplace, and aspects such as the publication industry, conference fees, and international mobility create barriers for early career and, especially, marginalized researchers. We will also explore how discrimination impacts research itself, influencing what is considered valid, reliable, and credible knowledge, and how marginalization affects the toolkit of research methods.
Viewing our academic institutions as learning organizations, we will reflect on our own positions, creatively envision our academic utopias, and develop realistic strategies for cultivating change within and beyond our institutions – working toward a more inclusive and just academic environment.
What we will focus on:
- Academia as a network of institutions: power dynamics and structural inequalities
- How discrimination shapes research topics, theories, and methods
- Developing our Academic Utopia
- Practical strategies for addressing marginalization and discrimination
About the workshop lead
Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam (she/ her) is a research associate at CAIS in the research program ‘Societal Cohesion in Digital Media Environments’. Her work focuses on polarization, societal cohesion, and the dynamics of marginalization and discrimination—both in news media and from a methodological perspective, particularly in relation to computational social science methods. Ahrabhi has a strong interest in discrimination within academia and has organized multiple workshops on the topic. Previously, she co-organized the network ‘Navigating Intersectionalities and Creating Opportunities in Academia’ at the University of Vienna. Together with a colleague, she explored the nexus of academia and discrimination in a blog piece: Dismantling the Ivory Tower.