What does you research project focus on?
My work examines the presence of liquid racism in UK public narratives with a seemingly antiracist stance. The focus is on immigrant success stories posted on the blogs and websites of charity organisations and NGOs. Despite the declared pro-immigrant attitude of the narratives, the findings show that racism can often operate in subtle and ambiguous ways. A critical discourse analysis shows that migration and asylum seeking are often represented as transactional, promoting the concept of an ideal refugee who integrates, if not assimilates, and consistently pays the country back in return. The dominant ways in which integration is naturalised results in the exclusion of addressees who might not conform to this image. It also leads to the internalisation of racism by those who strive to conform to this image.

What do you hope to achieve?
Working alongside my postdoctoral research assistant, Paige Johnson, I collaborate with the charity organisation Race Equality First, working towards the collection of a corpus titled “Anti-Racist, but”. The corpus will be used to feed into racism awareness raising workshops organised by Race Equality First. Overall, this research aims contribute to the improvement of communication and race education with the parallel goal of changing attitudes about racial diversity.

This work overlaps with and expands upon my involvement as external collaborator with the international project Tracing Racism in Anti-raCist discourse: a critical approach to European public speech on the migrant and refugee crisis (TRACE/ HFRI-FM17-42), led by Prof. Archakis and funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, in collaboration with Universities in Greece, Malta and Switzerland.