School of Social and Political Science

Description

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Event Description

This series of talks aims to demystify graduate school and academia, and explore the diverse routes that academics have taken into their careers. This is part of the EDI committee's ‘Pathways Project’, which is particularly (but not exclusively) aimed at students from first-generation and under-represented backgrounds who might want to pursue postgraduate study.

Introduction from Idil Akinci

In this talk, I will reflect on my ‘accidental path into academia,’ sharing how my experiences as a migrant in Dubai and now in the UK - shaped by broader histories of ancestral migration — have influenced the research I pursue today. I will discuss how personal encounters with borders and settlement restrictions, themes that now form the core of my academic work, ultimately led me to embark on a PhD journey in the UK. Through this reflection, I hope to offer insights into how lived experience and academic inquiry often intertwine in unexpected ways.

Biography

Before joining the Social Policy department at the University of Edinburgh in 2022, I worked as an Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow, cross-appointed between the Department of Sociology, the Alwaleed Centre, and IMES. I currently convene Race, Power and Social Policy, a course that examines why and how race matters to the study and practice of social policy, while exploring the shifting global configurations of power and inequality.

I hold a PhD in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex (2018), where my research explored the everyday experiences of national identity and citizenship among young Arab migrant communities and Emirati citizens in Dubai. During my MA in Sociology at City, University of London, I conducted fieldwork in Dubai with South Asian communities (2012–2013), deepening my engagement with questions of migration and belonging in the Gulf.

Since 2021, my research has focused on the experiences of aging migrants and their life plans after retirement in the United Arab Emirates. In April, the findings from this decade-long project were exhibited at Alserkal Arts Foundation under the title Afterlives of Retirement: A Multigenerational Archival Project of Migration and Aging in the UAE.

A lunch will be provided, with vegan and gluten free options.