Copyright

James Burford; Fatima Alhaj Hasan

Published On

2026-04-29

Language

  • English

Print Length

16 pages

THEMA

  • JBFH
  • JHB
  • JHBA
  • JN
  • JBFA

BISAC

  • SOC007000
  • SOC026000
  • SOC026040
  • SOC008000
  • EDU015000

Keywords

  • migrant academics
  • academic precarity
  • academic mobility
  • autoethnography
  • postcolonial academia
  • global higher education

In It Differently, Together

Working through Precarity as a Migrant Supervisor and International Doctoral Student

Chapter of: From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity

This chapter offers a co-authored narrative by a doctoral student and her supervisor, both migrant academics in the UK, reflecting on their personal and professional experiences of academic precarity. Through intertwining life stories, Jamie and Fatima explore how migration, instability, and institutional vulnerability have shaped their individual academic paths and their evolving supervisory relationship. While their experiences differ—marked by unequal privileges and constraints—they reveal shared tensions around mobility, belonging, and uncertainty. Together, their reflections challenge individualised understandings of precarity, offering insight into the complex, relational nature of academic labour and the transformative potential of supervisor-student dialogue.

Contributors

James Burford

(author)
Reader in Education Studies at University of Warwick
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0707-7401

James Burford (PhD) is a Reader in Education Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. At Warwick, James co-founded the Doctoral Education and Academia Research Centre, which he directs with Professor Emily Henderson. His recent projects have focused on inequalities in doctoral admissions, reasonable adjustment and mitigation in doctoral assessment and the narratives of founders of educational research centres. James is an Editor-in-Chief of Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education and an elected trustee of the UK Council for Graduate Education.

Fatima Alhaj Hasan

(author)
PhD candidate in Education Studies at University of Warwick
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9432-0850

Fatima Alhaj Hasan is a final year PhD candidate in Education Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research explores workplace conflict among academics in Syrian higher education institutions, with a focus on power dynamics and institutional structures. She holds a Master’s in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and a BA in English Literature and Speech Communication. Fatima has extensive experience as an ESOL instructor and lecturer in Syrian universities and previously worked as a Postgraduate Research Development Officer at Warwick. She has served as a Research Assistant on a Warwick positive action initiative evaluation project, and as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Warwick Education Studies. Fatima is passionate about advancing understanding of academic life in Syria and contributing to global conversations on higher education.