‘That's just what I do’: placing emotion in academic activism

Askins, K. (2009) ‘That's just what I do’: placing emotion in academic activism. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(1), pp. 4-13. (doi: 10.1016/j.emospa.2009.03.005)

Abstract

In this paper, I wish to critically reflect on the role of emotion/s in how I position myself with regards to research, teaching and learning, drawing on experiences over the past three years as a human geography lecturer ‘doing’ research with refugees and asylum seekers in a local inner city area. While there has been increasing debate regarding what constitutes ‘the activist-academic’, in particular deconstructing any dualism or border between ‘academic’ and ‘activist’, the motivation for undertaking such a role is generally ascribed to an ‘ideological commitment’ to social and personal change of one type or another. For me, such a commitment cannot be separated from how I feel about the issues that I research, learn and teach about. In particular, I explore how emotions relate across different spaces and places in my life to produce motivation for activism and how that activism – specifically the encounters with people through it – feeds back into emotional geographies across my professional (and personal) endeavours. More broadly, I'm concerned with the ways in which emotional becomings and the interconnectivities across spaces of activity/ism and everyday life play out beyond my own individual subjective experience, but rather are caught up in ‘situated, relational perspectives’ (after Bondi, 2005). I argue that recognising the significance of emotion has implications for how we conduct and disseminate research

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Askins, Dr Kye
• Authors: Askins, K.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Journal Name: Emotion, Space and Society
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 1755-4586
• ISSN (Online): 1878-0040
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2009 Elsevier
• First Published: First published in Emotion, Space and Society 2(1):4-13
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.