Lerelle Wilden-Lewis, a PhD researcher in Media, shares her experience putting together a cultural exchange event for postgraduate researchers as a part of the That's Me! project.
"When I think of a person with a PhD, I think of an upper-middle-class, white man. I don’t know why, but I just do. This adds so much doubt, impostor syndrome and uncertainty to my PhD journey. I can’t speak for all of us, but this has been my personal experience as a Black PhD researcher.
I am still trying to get used to being a Black postgraduate researcher. The two identities always felt so disconnected. I’m trying to unlearn so many of my own biases and preconceptions about academia, a world that seemed so far away from my race, class and gender. I don’t even know where these ideas have come from, but I want rid of them, for me and for anyone else who has felt the same.
I am lucky enough to be a part of the UK Research and Innovation-funded Birmingham City University and University of Wolverhampton project, “That’s Me!”. The project is aimed at eliminating barriers to postgraduate research study in the West Midlands for students from the global majority.
When tasked with coming up with a calendar of events for postgraduate researchers from the global majority, Farzad, Shameela, and I put together our very own Cultural Exchange event. The event gave centre stage to many different cultures. We brought meals from our cultures and shared stories, dances and customs. It was amazing to see so many other PhD researchers celebrating and sharing their cultures. I learnt so much and felt so seen as people took part in my cultural traditions. I felt so included and “invited in” when all of these different cultural traditions were shared with me.
I saw the most beautiful garments, I had some lovely roti, jollof rice and stew, I learnt about hat customs, naming traditions, heard some beautiful poetry and heard many different languages.
I talked about my complicated identity: Black and British-born with Jamaican ethnicity and heritage, in a nutshell. I’m not only British, and I’m not only Jamaican. Barry from X/Twitter is going to swiftly remind me “I’m not really English, though”, but in a marketplace in Jamaica, I know I will be addressed as “English girl”. I have lived in England for my entire life with a Black British culture that is heavily influenced by the Jamaican diaspora and with amazing family members and friends, who have included and celebrated Jamaican culture throughout my life. I am incredibly proud of my heritage and respect those that came before me, whilst I live in my Britishness every day, with some extra Black-British spice. It feels like a bit of a contradiction, especially with how I feel about empire, imperialism, colonialism and all that jazz, but let’s keep it light for now. Identity and culture are complicated, and that’s okay.
I loved hearing the pride that people had in where they came from, what they eat, what they wear, how they navigate relationships and family and more. The diversity was wonderful. Not only the diversity, but the celebration of diversity. It wasn’t just different people being present; it was that these differences were being discussed, celebrated, and shared, and thus, authentic connections were made over cultural differences and newly found similarities.
“Wow, you guys do X as well? So do we. We call it Y”
“I didn’t realise that X had so much meaning”
I am so happy to have been involved in creating this type of space to facilitate this experience. Thank you to all who attended, shared and put this together with me. This event challenged my own unconscious perceptions of what a postgraduate researcher is supposed to be. Maybe I can reconcile these cultural and academic identities after all."
*Global Majority = the collective of people who are not white, encompassing Black, Asian, Brown, mixed heritage, and Indigenous people from the Global South.
