In 2019, I had started considering the idea of producing a book that would enable an entire sector to act on tackling racism and intersectional inequalities in higher education. When reflecting on my time in higher education, the triggers for this idea had been bred out of my own personal experiences and professional understanding of interpersonal and institutional racism.

As the editor for the book, I feel it is important for the reader to understand that editing this work has been painful and emotional. It has triggered my own experiences of racial trauma during my time in higher education. When I was a younger gay and Indian undergraduate student, I noticed that none of the Psychology theory I was being taught referenced any evidence or literature from outside North America or Europe, and one module on Cultural Psychology was still somewhat Eurocentric. Outside the classroom, I was subject to racial abuse in the LGBTQI+ community, where I was often called a ‘Paki’ in the street, and where I was assaulted in a club for sitting on a chair; I was told that chairs were not for people like me. In my life, I have been too Brown to be gay, or too gay to be Brown, and that is a conflict I couldn’t accept for a long time and resulted in my experience of mental illness.

During my postgraduate career, I was referred to as ‘corner shop’ by other students, which they called ‘banter’. I felt it was easier to go along with these aggressions to cope. In some ways, I had expected this from other students, as I could rationalise it in my head as being related to alcoholism or a generic immaturity. However, as I delved further into my doctoral research, I learnt that racism was not always so explicit. It sometimes meant being treated differently and unfairly compared with my White peers. During my research career, I was screamed at by a senior academic, a victim of gaslighting from other senior academics and during my first time in Australia at an academic conference, I was actively excluded from being invited to meet with my supervisors’ teams, to name a few of many instances. One experience that continues to haunt me was being trapped in an office with two senior academics, who after I had made a rectifiable mistake on a conference presentation by forgetting to include their names under the presenter field, they chastised, humiliated and threatened me across what felt like the longest 30-ish minutes of my life.