On the 21st of March, on the international day against racism and discrimination, there will be the launch event of the podcast on Joy in Academia. This podcast is a collective effort to practice joy and find joy by bringing racialised academics together to find, nurture, heal, grow, think, be and journey together in academia. Please mark your calendars and register in advance via this link.

The Joy in Academia project is funded by Migration and Societal Change and initiated by Onur Şahin (Utrecht University-Social, Health & Organisational Psychology), Zehra Çolak (Utrecht University-Education), Daudi van Veen (Utrecht University-Interdisciplinary Social Science), Dounia Bourabain (Hasselt University, School of Social Sciences) and Zakia Essanhaji (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Sociology .

This podcast series aims to highlight how racialized academics, in their unique ways, have overcome obstacles, developed resilience, and found purpose and joy within academia. Specifically, the series of interviews explores an under-discussed aspect of the academic experience for racialized people – the pursual and maintenance of joy. In layperson’s terms, joy is used as a synonym for experiencing a range of pleasant emotions (Johnson, 2020). However, in recent years, the term Black joy has been used to describe the African-American tradition of fostering “that sense of hope that something good can come out of the bad”, “selfcompassion”, and “a willingness to vulnerably sit with ourselves and others in the act of emotional allegiance” despite facing racial injustice (Lewis-Giggetts, 2022). This framing of joy among racialized people as consisting of hope, self-compassion, and fostering solidarity is what this project explores among racialized academics in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Start Date and Time: 21 March 2024 19:00

End Date and Time: 21 March 2024 22:00

Location: Utrecht University Hall

Registration link