Epistemic exclusion in higher Education: navigating racialised gatekeeping in Australia

This paper presents a collective autoethnography of our experiences as diasporic scholars navigating the racialised terrain of Australian academia. Writing from our lived realities as researchers of race, we examine the often invisible processes of gatekeeping that sustain whiteness,Footnote1 both structurally and interpersonally. We explore how racialised norms and forms of “white-speak” shape academic cultures, silencing and disciplining those who do not conform to dominant institutional expectations. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and the concept of whiteness as property, we argue that ostensibly neutral standards of excellence are embedded in exclusionary logics. Through collaborative autoethnography, we centre our shared and divergent positionalities, identifying patterns of marginalisation alongside practices of resistance. By exposing the racialised mechanisms that regulate belonging, we call for the creation of counter-spaces and urge institutions to move beyond symbolic inclusion toward systemic transformation grounded in racial equity and the full recognition of minoritised scholars’ humanity.